The Defensor pacis of Marsiglio of Padua;

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HARVARD THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

HARVARD
THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

EDITED FOR THE

FACULTY OF DIVINITY

IN

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

if BY

GEORGE F. MOORE, JAMES H. ROPES,
KIRSOPP LAKE

CAMBRIDGE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD

OxTORD University Press

1920

HARVARD THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

VIII

THE

DEFENSOR PACIS
OF MARSIGLIO OF PADUA

A CRITICAL STUDY
EPHRAIM EMERTON

WINN PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY EMERITUS

CAMBRIDGE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON: HUMPHREY Mn.FORD

OXVORO Universitv Pkess

1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920
HARVARD UXIVERSITY PttESS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The most complete examination of the manuscripts of the
Defensor Pads thus far pubUshed is by an American scholar,
Dr. James Sullivan, now State Historian of New York, " The
Manuscripts and Date of Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor
Pads," in the English Historical Review, 1905, pp. 293-307.
Dr. Sullivan personally examined twenty manuscripts in several
European libraries and drew certain conclusions as to the date
of composition of the Defensor. It is a matter of regret that
other occupations have prevented him from carrying on his
studies to the point of preparing a much needed new edition of
the original. Meanwhile this work has been taken up by Pro-
fessor Richard Scholz of Leipzig, and his edition, to appear in
the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in a Section to be called
Tradatus de jure imperiali saec. XIII et XIV, may be expected
shortly.

A brief summary of the printed editions is given by Dr.
Sullivan in an article on Marsiglio of Padua and William of
Ockam in the American Historical Review for April and July,
1897. I have made use of the very imperfect edition of Goldast
in his Monarchiae Romani Imperii, etc., 3 vols, fol., Frankfurt,
1668, vol. II, pp. 154-312, and also of Professor Scholz's much
abbreviated edition in usum scholarum in Quellensammlung zur
Deutschen Geschichte, 1914.

No complete translation from the original has ever been made
into any modern language, but partial translations have ap-
peared in French (before 1363), Italian (1363, from the French),
German (1545), and Enghsh. The English translation by
William Marshall was published in 1535 and is now extremely
rare. There are three copies in the Bodleian and one in the
British Museum, but I am not aware of any copy in this
country.

Up to the present time the most complete and satisfactory
analysis of the contents of the Defensor is that given by Sigmund
Riezler in his illuminating study, Die literarischen Widersacher

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

der Pdpste zur Zeit Ludwig des Baiers, 1874. All later writers
have borrowed freely from this, but its conclusions have been
modified on many points of detail. The most careful study of
Marsiglio's life is that of Professor Baldassare Labanca of
Padua, who writes from the point of view of a liberal Italian
patriot with a strong tinge of local Paduan pride : Marsiglio da
Padova, Riformatore politico e religioso del secolo XIV, 1882.

Shorter discussions of Marsiglio and related authors are to
be found in : —

Friedberg, Emil, Die mittelalterlichen Lehren iiber das Verhdltniss von
Staat und Kirche, 1869. Zeitschrift fiir Kirchenrecht VIII, pp.
121-138.

Bezold, Friedr., Die Lehre von der Volkssouverdnetdt wdhrend des
Mittelalters, 1876. Historische Zeitschrift XXXVI, pp. 343-347.

Miiller, Carl, Der Kampf Ludwigs des Baiern mit der Romischen
Curia, 1879-80.

Scaduto, Fr., Stato e Chiesa negli scritti politici 1122-131(7 . 1882.

Guggenheim, M., Marsilius von Padua und die Staatslehre des Aris-
toteles. Historische Vierteljahrschrift XV (7) 1904.

Dunning, W. A., A History of Political Theories Ancient and Medi-
aeval, 1905, pp. 238-244.

Stieglitz, L., Die Siaatstheorie des Marsilius von Padua, 1914. Bei-
trage zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters.

Lupoid von Bebenburg: de juribus regni ei imperii Romani tractatus
variarum rerum cognitione refertus. Basileae, 1566.

Meyer, H., Lupoid von Bebenburg: Studien zu seinen Schriften, 1909.
Studien und Darstellungen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte VII,
1-2.

Valois, Noel, Jean de Jandun et Marsile de Padoue auteurs du De-
fensor Pads. Histoire Litteraire de la France XXXIII, pp. 528-
623.

Baumann, J. J., Die Staatslehre des heiligen Thomas von Aquino, 1873.

ZeiUer, J., L'idee de Vetat dans S. Thomas d'Aquin, 1910.

Wicksteed, Philip H., Dante and Aquinas, 1913.

Cappa-Legora, A., La politico di Dante e di Marsilio da Padova, 1906.

THE DEFENSOR PACIS

OF

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA

To understand the importance of the poUtical doctrines of
Marsiglio of Padua one must bring them into relation with
those of two of his not remote predecessors, Thomas Aquinas
and Dante AUghieri. Aquinas died in 1274, three or four years
after the birth of MarsigUo and Dante died in 1321, two or
three years before the appearance of Marsigho's great work,
the Defensor Pacts. One might be tempted, therefore, to speak
of these three notable contributors to poHtical theory as repre-
sentatives of contemporary thought. To do so, however,
would be to miss the most essential quality in each. Aquinas,
here as elsewhere in his monumental activity, is the spokesman
of an epoch in human history that within a short generation
after him was gone forever. Dante sounds the note of a transi-
tion just beginning to outhne itself clearly in the rapid march
of events. Marsiglio is the herald of a new world, the prophet
of a new social order, acutely conscious of his modernness and
not afraid to confess it. His book has often been called the
most remarkable literary product of the Middle Ages, and I
am inclined to accept this verdict. And yet, even the name
of Marsiglio is unknown to most persons outside the narrow
circle of students of political theory. Speaking to an audience
of clergymen educated quite beyond the ordinary level of their
class, I found that there was but one in the company who had
ever heard Marsiglio's name, and that was only because he had
been a pupil of mine in his university days.

The explanation of this obscurity is, I think, not far to seek.
The teaching of Marsiglio entered so subtly but so completely
into the doctrine of his successors in the work of national de-
velopment and of church reform that it has been overshadowed
by their greater fame. From Wycliffe to Luther his influence

1

2 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

can be traced with entire distinctness. It is seen sometimes,
though rarely, in open acknowledgement of indebtedness,
oftener in unmistakable similarities of argument, and again in
the unsparing criticism of orthodox opponents. His name is
the most hated in the whole category of critics of the mediaeval
order, and justly, for the defenders of the existing system
perceived from the first that Marsigiio, more accurately than
any one before him, had put his finger on the sore spot of Euro-
pean civilization as worked out on the mediaeval theory of
society. The limit of that theory, as developed by Thomas
Aquinas in all his voluminous writing, had been reached.
Sooner or later it must give way before a new spii'it of criti-
cism and a new sense of power in social elements that had
hitherto been denied their right of expression. How soon that
was to be no man in the early fourteenth century could foresee,
but the travail of the new time was beginning, and Marsiglio's
teaching was its potent agent.

The world of Thomas Aquinas was dominated by a few great
simple universal ideas, of which the life of man, both individual
and associated, was the reflex. At the heart of things was God,
revealed in the uniformity and harmony of Nature. The
center and crown of creation was Man, to whom was given the
rule over the earth, which again was the center of the material
universe, served by the obedient sun and accompanied by the
planetary and the starry host in tributary homage. Corre-
sponding to this majestic order of Nature, the associated life
of man was also an image of ordered unity. It had, to be sure,
its varieties of race and nation and social class, but these varie-
ties were only the differentiations of an essentially unified
existence. The one and only God had made one sole and
sufficient revelation of himself, and this revelation had in-
cluded a scheme of social order. Divine Providence had
chosen for the moment of its revelation a point of time when
the world was all united under the one beneficent, peaceful
sway of the Roman Empire, and had demonstrated its purpose
by bringing into one efficient and harmonious whole the two
dominant forces of this Empire and the Christian Church, the
supreme trustees of its revelation.

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 3

All history since the beginning of Christianity had been the
further demonstration of this divine purpose. The unity of
the Church, through the continuing power of the divine will,
had been embodied in the institution of the Roman Papacy,
the one single depositary of the leadership of Christ through
his one chosen agent, Peter, the leader of the Apostles. The
unity of civil society had been secured by the continuation of
the Roman imperial power, transferred in due time from the
rebellious East to the subservient West in the persons of suc-
sive rulers, whose imperial claim the kings of the earth had
acknowledged with willing submission. And these two unities
of Church and of State, were in essence but one; for, as the
spiritual is higher than the material, as the sun is brighter than
the moon, so was the spiritual power in the last resort superior
to the temporal. Each was but an illustration within its own!
peculiar sphere of that divine sovereignty under which by the I
very definition of God all lesser rule belongs.

It mattered not at all to the defenders of this magnificent
theory that in fact a great majority of Christians refused to
submit to the headship it implied. It was of no account that
no trace of such a headship could be found until ten generations
of Christians had passed their lives under a totally different
conception of church order. It was convenient to forget that
as between the two branches of the divine administration of
western Cliristendom there had never existed that harmony
which the whole theory of papal headship assumed. All these
apparent limitations were only the accidents proper to all
institutions entrusted to human hands. The theory persisted,
and the thirteenth century — "greatest of Christian centuries"
in the calm judgment of its admirers — had seemed to put the
seal upon its triumph. From Innocent III to Boniface VIII
the Papacy had been able to celebrate a series of victories over
its secular opponents, the national governments, the national
episcopates, and the spokesman for all these temporal interests,
the mediaeval Empire.

It is this triumph of the mediaeval theory of society that
forms the background of the extraordinary activities of Thomas
Aquinas. By whatever other name he may be known, the

4 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

most significant word to describe him is the one he himself
suggests, the "Summarist." Not only in his greatest work,
the "Summa Theologiae," but throughout his enormous literary
product, he gives us as in a mirror the reflection of the fixed
conditions of thought by which the society of his day was
governed. Contemporaries of his in the field of public and
private law were putting forth books of law which they called
''mirrors" (Spiegel). So Thomas mirrored to his generation
and to all succeeding generations, the philosophic, the religious,
the social, and the political ideals of his time. To him as to
the men of the thirteenth century in general, these ideals
seemed to express not so much aims of the future as actually
accomplished facts. The ideal seemed to have taken shape in
institutions that must endure forever.

In his treatment of the state as the most important form of
/Ibuman association Thomas follows almost completely the lead
of Aristotle. He approves the monarchy as the best type of
government, because it offers the best security against disorder.
He draws, however, a sharp line between the monarch and the
tyrant. To prevent the single ruler from degenerating into
tyranny he would have him limited by some constitutional
restraint on the part of the best elements of the population,
but he is, perhaps purposely, vague as to the precise nature of
this restraint. His monarch must be a "good" man, that is
he must have for his guiding principle the welfare of his sub-
jects. It is interesting to note that he nowhere discusses the
nature of the Empire as distinguished from other forms of
monarchical government. He assumes that there will be
many different groupings of men around many leaders, and
what he says as to the duties and obligations of the ruler
applies to all alike. He makes no criticism of the imperial
idea as such, and he doubtless assumes the existence of such a
coordinating power among the principalities of Christendom.
Why then should he not have given to this quite unique ele-
ment in the Christian commonwealth a treatment proportioned
to its historic as well as to its theoretical importance?

The answer to this problem may, perhaps, be found in

I Thomas's supreme interest in the Church as the one coordi-

nating force needed to give balance and harmony to the poUti-

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 5

cal structure of the Christian state. To have elaborated after
his fashion the role of the Empire as the arbiter and guarantor
of peace among the states might well have seemed to him to
be raising its function as at once the colleague and the rival
of the Papacy to the danger point. Aquinas was not likely to
forget in any theoretical idealism the practical facts of his
present-day politics. During the whole period of his literary
activity the twin powers of the mediaeval scheme had been . ^^
fighting out their eternal conflict to what may well have ''
seemed to him a final finish. In 1250 Frederic II, the embodi-
ment of all that was most hateful to the papal interests, died ^'
defeated and discredited. His vast plans for the union of
Germany with southern Italy had been scattered by the death
of his son Manfred on the field of battle and of his grandson
Corradino on the scaffold. All this had been accomplished by
the unwearied diplomacy of the papal administration. So
that, when Aquinas died in 1274 there was good reason to
suppose that imperialism had done its work and was ready
to give up the struggle. The election of Rudolf of Habsburg
in the previous year had seemed to set the seal upon this
conclusion; for his election was won at the price of a clear
understanding that henceforth the things of Caesar were no
longer to be confounded with the things of God.

That gives us the key note of Aquinas's thought on the whole -
subject. The cause of the long confiict between the temporal
and the spiritual as embodied in the Empire and the Papacy,
had been the confusion of their respective powers. The
Empire was partly a divine institution; the Papacy, whatever
disclaimers it might put forth, was at least equally a poUtical
institution. In the scheme of Aquinas this confusion dis-
appears. Aside from and above all human law there must be
a divine law. The purpose of human laws is to promote the
earthly welfare of civil society. The object of the divine law
is to direct men, both individually and socially, toward their
highest end, the attainment of everlasting life. The adminis-
tration of this divine law is in the hands of the Church, and the
unity necessary for its efficiency is secured by the headship of
the successor of Peter.

This unity is necessary in all matters in which the Church

6 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

as a whole is interested, especially in the uniformity of doctrine,
without which there could be no real unity of structure. In
case of doubt as to doctrine it is the pope alone who has the
right to declare the truth. Here, almost precisely six hundred
years before its formal declaration as an article of faith, we
have the principle of papal infalhbility definitely enunciated.
No wonder that Aquinas has been proclaimed by the modern
Papacy as the chief champion of the Roman tradition. But
this is not the whole of it. While Aquinas tries to limit the
power of Rome strictly to the declaration of the faith, he does
not hesitate to draw the inevitable conclusion. The power
which defines the faith in general is obviously the power which
also determines in a given case whether an individual has
departed from the faith. If then a ruler over Christian
people is convicted by this last tribunal of having departed
from the faith, what is the effect upon his relation to his
people?

The argument here is very close. The Church does not
punish him for his defect of faith; it only defines it. Its dis-
cipline extends only to separation from the body of the faithful.
But the ruler so separated is placed outside the order of right-
eousness upon which rests the obhgation of his subjects to
obedience. As soon, therefore, as his excommunication is
pronounced the subjects are ipso facto released from their
allegiance. It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the enormous
range of this simple declaration. It places within the power
of one fallible man, however supported by the judgment or the
interests of other faUible men, first to define a crime, then to
apply this definition in a specific case, and then to overturn the
order of a civil community by the simple declaration of his
decision. It is based upon the ghastly proposition that inde-
pendent judgment in regard to fundamental questions of
religion is a crime fatal to the order of the civil community and
therefore to be repressed by the civil power. The crime of
heresy consists in the exercise of such independent judgment
in regard to religion, and its definition could be — and was —
indefinitely extended to cover any form of offence against the
dominant power of the Church expressed through its agent,

^lARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 7

the Vicar of Christ at Rome. The ruler who set himself in
opposition to the Papacy incurred the imminent risk of being
declared a heretic and thus of losing his hold upon the allegiance
of his subjects.

The political doctrines of Aquinas work out, therefore, to the
ultimate supremacy of the papal government over all the civil
authorities of Christendom. If they could ever be realised the
result would be a monstrous theocracy within which every
independent activity, whether of the individual or of organized
society must shrivel and perish. That they had not been
realized up to the time of Aquinas had been largely due to the
unflagging energy of those representatives of the imperial
power, men like Otto the Great, Henry IV, Frederic Barbarossa,
and Frederic II, who had made themselves the champions of
all national interests in their long struggle for recognition. The
abandonment of this championship by Rudolf of Habsburg
threw the responsibility for maintaining the rights of civil gov-
ernment upon the several national kingdoms.

In this new phase of the conflict the leadership passes from
Germany to France. The final, or what appeared to the men
of Aquinas' generation to be the final, triumph of the papal
over the imperial poHcy had been brought about largely through
the introduction of French influence into Italy to counteract the
pressure of Germany. Within less than a generation after
the death of Aquinas it became clear that in thus calHng upon
France to serve its cause in Italy the Papacy had summoned a
servant likely at any moment to turn into a master, a master
so much the more dangerous as it was free from all the tradi-
tions of theoretical loyalty that had at times restrained the
action of the Empire. Back of every effort on the part of the
French government lay the steadily increasing sense of French
nationality and a constantly growing wilHngness to make
sacrifices for it.

By the close of that first generation after Aquinas the papal
chair was occupied by a Frenchman and had been removed
from Rome to Avignon, there to remain continuously occupied
by Frenchmen and subject to the immediate pressure of French
political necessity during two generations to come. The process

8 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

of this transfer does not here concern us. Enough that it was
based upon the regular working of the papal constitutional
mechanism whereby the election of popes was entrusted to a
limited body of electors appointed by popes and producing
new popes after their own kind so long as the policy of appoint-
ment of these electors continued the same. The conventional
phrase "Babylonian Captivitj^" represents fairly enough the
feeling of all those loyal elements of western Christendom
which saw in this situation the perversion of everything which
had made the Papacy its efficient and honored head.

II

If the thought of Thomas Aquinas on the natiu'e of civil powers
and their relation to the supremacy of the Church was in-
fluenced by the apparent defeat of the imperial policy in its
Hohenstaufen phase and the consequent triumph of the papal
system, it is equally true that the thought of Dante on the
same subjects was profoundly stirred by the events accom-
panying the transfer of the papal seat to France. If we may
speak of the election of Rudolf of Habsburg in 1273 as marking
the end of the mediaeval Empire, we may with equal accuracy
think of the fall of Boniface VIII in 1303 as dating the collapse
iof the mediaeval Papacy. As the contemporaries of Aquinas
I welcomed the victory of the Papacy as fixing forever the doc-
I trine of centralization in the administration of the Church, so,
I within a short generation, men were deploring the corruption
I of a too strongly centralized Papacy and sighing for a return
ito the good old days of imperial control. Aquinas was born
a NeapoUtan subject, a citizen of that Italian state which was
specifically ''The Kingdom" {II Regno). Dante was the child
of Florence, the state of all others in Italy which most fiercely
defended the principle of democracy. The background of his
political thinking was that furious partisan struggle of which
he was himself the most illustrious victim.

As Dante looked over the field of Italian politics he saw five
great powers wrestling for the hegemony of the peninsula.
Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome {la Chiesa), and Naples were

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 9

already outlined as the leading states around which the lesser
cities were grouping themselves in ever shifting combinations.
Among these greater and lesser powers there were continual
conflicts for economic or pohtical advantage, but these more
purely local conflicts were all interpenetrated by another great
historic antagonism, that of the Empire and the Papacy. The
names of Guelf and Ghibelline had lost none of their actual
significance with the nominal patching up of a peace between
the two powers. It is true that this greater issue was often
obscured in the nearer interests of party warfare within city
limits; but whenever the larger aspects of Italian relations
came once more to the front it was always the signal for a re-
newal of the old alignment. The party groupings of the old
Hohenstaufen days served again and agam as rallying points
for an opposition which had its roots deep down in the structure
of mediaeval society.

It was, therefore, inevitable that when Dante, citizen of
Florence, participant and victim alike of her partisan conflicts,
came to reflect upon the cause of the evils from which she and |
he both suffered, he should find it in the absence of a superior \
power which might moderate at least if not entirely remove 1
them. By inheritance a Guelf, that is a natural defender of i
the democratic principle and its conventional alliance with the
papal interests, he found himself thrown by the convulsions
of party struggle into the camp of the Ghibellines. He became' '
identified henceforth with that party which found its support
mainly in the feudal aristocratic elements of Italian society and
which looked naturally to the Empire as the guarantor of its .,
local claims.

The removal of the Papacy to Avignon, in other words the l
abandonment of its Italian character, was the last blow to an '^
Italian patriot's devotion to the doctrine of papal absolutism.
It is here that we find our point of departure for a comparison
of the political theories of Dante and Thomas Aquinas. Funda-
mentally they had a great deal in common. Both were, or
professed to be, inspired by the study of Aristotle's poUtical
ideas. To put this more accurately, both were filled with
certain ideal conceptions of human society, and when they

10 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

tried to put these into literary form, both found in Aristotle
formulas ready to their hand which could be interpreted in
such ways as would serve their turn. ''Originality," as we
use the word, was not a mediaeval virtue. To have put forth
ideas as one's own would in that day have been to invite dis-
aster. The only way to gain a hearing was to pile up authori-
ties; the only precaution needed was to make sure that one's
authorities were sound.

It was, we may be sure, not pride of scholarship, or at least
not this alone, that led men of the intellectual quality of
Aquinas and Dante to fill their pages so largely with Aristotehan
reference and method of demonstration. It was that they
desired to give to what were really their own opinions the
required sanction of acknowledged authority. It was in every
respect parallel to their use of Scripture for the same purpose.
Probably, in the case of Dante, the same may be said of his use
of "science." The obscure and bewildering appUcations of
mathematical and astronomical processes to the movement of
human affairs had doubtless its effect in commending the value
of the ideas thus hopelessly muddled up with irrelevant or
misleading conceptions.

Dante shares with Aquinas the general notion of the State
as a necessary organism designed primarily to maintain among
men that condition of ordered peace without which the legiti-
mate objects of human desire cannot be secured. He too
thinks of human society as the reflex of a divine order. He
sees the need of a divine representation on earth to secure the
consecration of this society to the highest ends of man's exist-
ence both in this world and in the life to come. He parts
company with Aquinas at the point of considering the means
by which this highest control shall be administered. Thomas,
as we have seen, has a very lofty conception of the function of
the state, but in the last analysis the earthly ruler is subject to
the constant revision of his acts by the superior power of the
Church, and this right of supervision is centered in the one
supreme jurisdiction of the Roman primate. Dante, on the
other hand, believed that the primacy of Rome was only one
part of the divine representation in the government of the

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 11

Christian commonwealth. Co-ordinate with it goes, in his
doctrine of sovereignty, the function of the Empire, and this,
not in virtue of any right conferred upon it by any earthly
sanction, but independently, by its very nature.

This doctrine of imperial supremacy is set forth in a separate
pamphlet with an argumentative defence probably convincing,
at least to the Ghibelline intelligence of Dante's day, and having
the merit, rather rare in a mediaeval document, of entire
clearness in its main position The treatise De Monarchia
deals, not as is often supposed, with the question of monarchi-
cal government as compared with other forms of administering
political states, but with the problem of a single administration
for all states together. In other words it is a glorification of
the idea underlying the Empire of the Middle Ages as the
continuation of the imperial system of ancient Rome. The
date of its composition is uncertain, but it is altogether prob-
able that it is to be set somewhere near the year 1310, the date
of the brilliant attempt of the Luxemburg emperor, Henry VII,
to revive the glorious days of the Hohenstaufen and to wipe
out the disgrace, if such it were, of the Habsburg compromise
of a generation previous. As to Dante's feehng about the
importance of such an imperial revival there can be no doubt
whatever. He had appealed to the Habsburger Albert with
all the fervor of a poet and a patriot to come down and rescue
Italy from the chaos of party strife. He had written to the
Italian cardinals to use all their influence to bring back the
Papacy to its rightful place and its bounden duty toward
the common fatherland. It is quite possible that he was one
of the band of Italians who went to meet their ''Savior" as
he descended from the Alps and began his first triumphal pro-
gress through the Lombard plain.

The De Monarchia in its three books develops in logical
order and according to the scholastic syllogistic method the
principle of a single universal sovereignty for the world. The
rule of one is better than the rule of many because it conforms
to the law of Nature and because it is best suited to the ends
for which human society exists. These ends are mainly peace
and justice. Peace is possible only under the control of a

12 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

supreme prince. This does not mean that all other lordships
are to be abolished. Diversities of rule are a necessity; but,
since they are bound to produce diversities of desire, they must
be regulated by some superior tribunal. But justice among
conflicting elements is possible only to a power which has no
interest in the questions at issue. The emperor is such a power,
because being the supreme ruler he has nothing to gain. He
represents in the things of this world the loftiest principle of
Christian charity, whereby he is able to maintain peace and to
distribute justice. So far Dante's argument for single rule
follows that of Thomas and in general that of Aristotle. He
concludes this first part with a characteristically naif Christian
turn : — Christ chose for the time of his appearing on earth
the first moment since Adam when the whole world acknowl-
edged the sovereignty of one imperial power.

But this monarchy belongs by right to Rome, and the second
book goes on to demonstrate this proposition. Here Dante is
deserted by his Aristotle and becomes dependent upon his
own ingenuity. Rome has a right to supreme rule because the
Romans were the noblest of peoples, as shown by the genealogy
of Aeneas, who derived his origin from all the noblest sources
of the ancient world. Rome gained her power by miraculous
means, proving the special care of God for her preservation
and expansion. Her wars were undertaken for the good of the
peoples; her ends were therefore right, and, the ends being
right, it follows that the means she employed were right also.
The Romans were created fit to rule, hence were fulfilling their
destiny and therefore were right. Supremacy acquired by
single combat is justly acquired, because in single combat
there is no enmity between the combatants, but only a desire
to seek the judgment of God. Now Rome did thus acquire
power, and therefore had a right to it. Finally again, Christ
by being born and accepting death under the rule of Rome
proved her right to rule.

Whatever one may think of the value of this logic, the point
is clear enough, and the third book cHnches the ''argument."
Its thesis is that the imperial power is independent of all
human control. From God alone it derives its right to regu-

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACTS 13

late the affairs of Christendom. The Empire existed before
the Church. The Donation of Constantine to the See of
Peter, which Dante of course in common with the mediaeval
world in general believed to be a genuine document, rested
upon this imperial right, otherwise Constantine would have
been granting what he had no power to bestow. The alleged
transfer of power by the Church from the eastern to the west-
ern ruler in the person of Charles the Great was impossible
because there was no possible source from which such right
of transfer could have been derived. Hence the necessity of
a two-fold leadership of the Christian commonwealth, a spir-
itual and a temporal. . . . The imperial Electors were not
electors in the strict sense, but rather heralds whose function
it was to proclaim the decision of divine Providence.

While thus repudiating in the most emphatic manner the
subjection of the Empire to the Papacy, Dante does not pro-
pose any remedy in case of conflict, but only presents his ideal
of the headship of the world. The emperor is bound to show
a filial regard for the person of the pope in order that he may
the more perfectly fulfil his own function of temporal leader-
ship. It is here that we see the advance of Dante beyond the
ideals of Thomas Aquinas. His government of human society
is not a theocracy. Temporal and spiritual administration
are to be harmonized through the reaUzation by the temporal
ruler of his divine origin and commission. The unfortunate
fact that this harmony, on which the whole structure of medi-
aeval society was theoretically based, had never in practice
been realized had nothing to do with the case. The failure
was due, not to the theory but to the frailty of human nature.
The remedy was now to go back to the pure standards of peace
and justice contained in Scripture and in the instruction of
the wise among the philosophers of the classic world.

Ill

The complete collapse of Henry the Seventh's Great Ad-
venture in Italy in the year 1313 was the demonstration, if
one had been needed, of the futility of Dante's dream of im-

14 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

perial restoration on the mediaeval basis. It leads us natur-
ally to a brief survey of the political background of Marsiglio
of Padua. The death of Henry was followed by a divided
election in Germany A Habsburg candidate, Frederic of
Austria, and an anti-Habsburg candidate, Ludwig of Bavaria,
divided the electoral vote between them. Neither would give
way, and the decision was left to the ancient arbitrament of
war. A struggle of eight years ended in 1322 in the defeat of
Frederic and the acknowledgment of Ludwig by the German
princes. Confhcts of this sort had always afforded to ambi-
tious popes the most welcome opportunities for asserting their
claims as arbiters of the political fortunes of the Empire, and
Pope John XXII was not the man to let the chance escape him.
Frenchman as he was, and accepting in its full extent the ac-
complished fact of the papal residence in France, he threw
himself from the first with hearty support on the side of Austria.

The ancient weapons that had served in the days of Hilde-
brand and Innocent III and Frederic Barbarossa were fur-
bished up again for this new encounter. On the papal side
every effort was made to show that the imperial power was
vaUd only as it was confirmed by the papal sanction. The
imperial champions not only denied this and asserted the prin-
ciple of imperial independence, but went far beyond it and
claimed in their turn rights of control over the papal office.
If this had been all, history might well have cried: "a, plague o'
both your houses!" and let it go at that. But what lends an
entirely new interest to this new phase of the old conflict is the
volume of discussion it called forth and in this discussion the
new emphasis placed upon the fundamental questions as to
the essential nature of the two parties in opposition, the State
and the Church.

The Papacy of John XXII found itself confronted by a very
peculiar alliance. Opposition from the imperial interests was
to be expected, but a still more dangerous antagonist was de-
veloped in the house of its friends. It was just a hundred
years since the papal institution had taken on a new lease of
life through the support of a tremendous popular religious
enthusiasm expressing itself in the new Mendicant Orders and

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 15

especially in the Order of St. Francis. In the course of that
century these orders had run through the usual stages of
enthusiasm, of practical organization, and of adjustment to the
standards of the world they had tried to reform. Naturally,
however, this worldlifying of the Orders had called out a re-
action toward the nobler aspirations of the founders, and this
idealism had found expression in that wing of the Minorites
known as the ''Fraticelli," or ''Spiritual Franciscans." Once
again the old battle cry of ''evangeUcal poverty" had been
raised as the standard to which all grades of the clerical hier-
archy ought to conform. Especially was this standard of
unworldliness to be applied to the Papacy itself, and this at a
moment when in its safe retreat at Avignon it was feeding a
hungry horde of its own creatures on the proceeds of a novel
and extremely promising system of taxation on benefices
throughout the western world ! Natural enough, that a John
XXII should reply to such an audacious suggestion by a decree
of heresy against the Fraticelli, and that they should retort by
a like charge against him. Not that this bandying back and
forth of heresy charges was in itself of any great importance.
It was useful only as calling out the defences on either side, in
which the real issues of the combat are revealed.

Between these two enemies of the Avignon Papacy, the
Empire and the "radicals," if one may so call them, of the
Franciscan order, there was thus prepared the basis of an alli-
ance that was to be of decisive importance in the immediate
future. Each turned to the other for the kind of support which
it specially needed and which the other was specially capable
of giving. Ludwig, in his fight for supremacy over the papal
power, needed every possible weapon on the legal and philo-
sophical side of his contention. The Fraticelli, strong only
on this ideal side, needed every possible security against actual
physical persecution by the papal arm. Whatever could be
done to show the extravagant worldliness of the Papacy in the
strongest light was in so far a contribution toward the general
clearing up of the mind of Europe on the whole broad question
of the relation of the clerical to the civil powers.

It is through this peculiar alliance that the services of

16 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

Marsiglio of Padua were brought into play. It seems well
established that he was not a member of the Franciscan or of
any other religious order, but it is equally clear that in his
studies and in his executive function at the university of Paris
he had been brought into close relations with Franciscan activ-
ities. Especially indicated, though not positively proven, is
his connection with the man who, more than any other, was
coming to be the spokesman of that new philosophy of Nomi-
nalism which was destined to transform the thinking processes
of Europe in transition, the English Franciscan, William
Ockham. Precisely what were the relations between the two
has been the subject of much study and speculation.^ There
is no doubt that, as the bearing of the nominaUstic teaching
upon the papal claims became more apparent, the work of
Marsiglio came to be thought of as the natural product of so
perverted a condition of the intellectual process. He must,
it was felt, have been a pupil of Ockham; from no other source
could such pestilent doctrines have been derived. In the con-
demnations of his work dating from 1327 on he is often expressly
described as a follower of Ockham's teaching. On the other
hand there is but slight evidence of actual collaboration be-
tween the two, and perhaps the safest conclusion is that each
influenced the other in the way best suited to his peculiar
genius and talent. Ockham was primarily a philosopher
interested, as a philosopher is bound to be, in discovering
general principles of thought applicable to all intellectual
jvr problems. Marsigho was primarily a political theorist em-
ployed in defending the rights of civil authority against what
he represented as encroachments upon these rights by a power
outside the range of civil control. In this defence the principle
of the new philosophy was a most valuable ally, and he fol-
lowed it, not avowedly as a disciple, but practically, as one
whose own mental process was naturally akin to that of the
acknowledged leader of the school.

Precisely how the emperor Ludwig came to know these two
champions of causes closely allied to his own is obscure but may

1 Sullivan, James; Marsiglio of Padua and William of Ockam. American
Historical Review, April and July, 1897.

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 17

easily be guessed. Ockham had identified himself early with
the "spiritual" wing of the Franciscans. He was a notable
member of the order, later becoming its General. It could
hardly fail that in the appeals of the order to the protection of
the Empire, his nam" should have been prominent as the most
vigorous exponent of its cause. The case of Marsiglio is a
little more difficult. Up to the time of his entrance into the
great conflict he had been known only as a scholar and univer-
sity man, not identified with ''causes" and not associated with
ruling powers anywhere. It is altogether possible that, having
something to sell, he took his wares to the market where they
would best be appreciated. It is to the credit of the hard
pressed Ludwig that he recognised promptly the value of the
contribution thus offered to him and became the patron under
whom Marsiglio was to serve during the brief period of his
public activity. The anecdote told of Ockham's first personal
dealings with the emperor applies equally well to Marsiglio:
"If you will protect me with your sword" the philosopher is
reported to have said, "I will defend you with my pen."

Many attempts have been made to show that the Defensor
Pads was the joint product of Marsiglio and a French colleague
of his at the university of Paris, John of Jandun. The most
recent of these is by M. Noel Valois in the Histoire litteraire de
la France, t. xxxiii, pp. 528-623 (1906). His article is entitled:
Jean de Jandun et Marsile de Padoue auteurs du Defensor Pads.
The author gives a detailed account of the philosophical
treatises which form the bulk of Jandun's literary product.
These are all of a highly speculative, metaphysical character
and are not concerned with political or ecclesiastical problems.
Their tendency is to a mild scepticism on the vexed question
of the "reality" of general concepts. Indeed it is not on any
marked similarity of views that M. Valois bases his opinion as
to the collaboration of Jandun with Marsiglio.

This, he declares is a ''fait avereJ' Contemporaries, "who
doubtless knew better than we what the truth of the matter
was," always couple the two together. Of this he gives four
examples :

1. A contemporary Latin "poem," De Bavari apostasia,

18 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

edited by O. Cartellieri in Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft fiir
dltere deutsche Geschichtskunde, Bd. xxv, pp. 712-715 (1899).
The author does indeed join the names of Jandun and Marsiglio
in a common indictment as serpentini gemini. He says that
they wrote codicillos, cartulas, et libellos, and that they made
false commentaries upon texts they did not understand. He
had heard them both lecture upon naturalia, but even then
their imagination had opened the way to contention {dis-
crimen). There is no mention of the Defensor Pads and no
reference to collaboration in this or any other work.

2. The French continuator of the Chronicle of Guillaume
de Nangis (ed. G^raud, ii, p. 74) describes the reception of
MarsigUo and Jandun at the court of Ludwig, but he also
makes no reference to the Defensor Pads or to collaboration
in any one book. He quotes as theirs certain opinions hostile
to the papal supremacy and says that Ludwig protected them
reluctantly without endorsing their views.

3. The judicial examination at Paris of a certain Francesco
of Venice, an alleged famulus of MarsigUo, given in Baluze,
Miscellanea, ii, p. 280 (1761). The young man says that
Marsiglio and Jandun, and they alone, composed "a certain
book," which, so far as he knew, contained no errors such as
were charged upon them. If it had, he would not have failed
to report them to the bishop of Paris. The obvious purpose
of this deposition was to clear the youth himself and everyone
else except the two persons directly charged. In any case it
is extremely slight evidence as to actual collaboration.

4. The bulls of John XXII directed against the emperor
Ludwig and against Marsiglio and Jandun make repeated
reference to "a certain book" which they presented to the
emperor and which furnished him support in his conflict with
the papal power. There can be no reasonable doubt that the
book thus referred to was the Defensor Pads, or that the papal
writer beUeved it was the expression of opinions held jointly
by the two Parisian masters. As proof of joint composition
such an estimate cannot go very far.

That is the most that can be said for a participation of John
of Jandun in the writing of the Defensor Pads. On the other

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 19

side is the internal evidence, borne by every line, of unity in
plan, in purpose, and in style. If any one worked with Marsig-
lio it must have been in a very subordinate capacity. A man
of Jandun's undoubted quahty could hardly have taken an
important part in the work without leaving far more distinct
traces of his activity than M. Valois has been able to show.
In his brief analysis of the Defensor he simply assumes
the double authorship without attempting to discriminate
in any way between the contributions of the two alleged
authors.

IV

The facts of Marsiglio's life are meagre and uncertain. He
was born in Padua probably about the year 1270, of good, but
not specially notable family. He left Padua as a young man
and migrated to Paris, the natural goal of all intellectually
ambitious youths of his day. He may have broken his journey
by a visit to Orleans, and may there have studied the elements
of the Roman Law, though only slight traces of a knowledge
of that law are visible in his writings. At Paris he was cer-
tainly the Rector of the famous University in the year 1312,
but our only information of his activity is in one or two docu-
ments bearing his name. He left Paris, perhaps in the year
1324, and reached Nuremberg in 1326. He was there received
with enthusiasm by the emperor, Ludwig the Bavarian, in
whose service he remains as long as we are able to trace his
career at all. In the following year he went with Ludwig to
Italy as his most trusted counsellor. He stood by the emperor
through the exciting experiences of the ensuing months, supply-
ing him with ammunition in his combat with the absentee
Papacy at Avignon and witnessing the outward triumph of
the ideas which he had embodied in the great treatise we shall
soon have to examine. He shared with Ludwig the inevitable
overturn in Roman-papal politics and set out with him on his
return to Germany in 1328. There he disappears from our
sight. The Florentine historian Giovanni Villani states cas-
ually (Book X, c. 100) that he died in Italy just a month after

20 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

leaving Rome.'^ Much later local historians of Padua report
that he was reconciled to the politic pope John XXII and made
Archbishop of Milan. There is some reason to believe that
the emperor, in his negotiations with the pope eight years
later, promised to discipline Marsiglio; but that is all.

This man, whose influence was felt throughout the whole
period of two hundred years between the appearance of the
Defensor Pads and the advent of Martin Luther, vanishes from
contemporary notice as completely as if he had never put pen
to paper. His identity as a man is lost in the one great work
by which he has lived. The Defensor Pads interests the mod-
ern student in virtue both of its contents and its methods.
What distinguishes it from its immediate predecessors and
also from much of the product of the century and more follow-
ing is its note of modernity. It is the obvious expression of
opinion of an individual, fortified it is true, by abundant if
not superabundant reference to authorities, but at every point
revealing independence of all authority. Frankly the work
of an advocate, expressly intended to support the cause of one
of the great parties in a world struggle, it seeks to bring this
advocacy of a party into relation with great general principles.
Marsiglio has no hesitation in using the first person. ''I will
now prove," ''I think," "I have demonstrated," are frequent
phrases. Everywhere one feels the personality of a thinking
man.

The first clear impression derived from the continuous read-
ing of the Defensor Pads is that it is all of one piece. It begins
with definitions, moves on to the application of these defini-
tions to specific instances, and concludes by bringing these
specific cases again into their proper subordination to defini-
tion. Continually there is reference both backward and
forward, showing that before the work left the author's
hands it was thoroughly reviewed and cast into one completed
whole. Its Latinity would make the ghost of Cicero weep,

' M. Noel Valois, in the article referred to above, makes the ingenious sugges-
tion that the person whose death is reported by Villani is not Marsiglio, but John
of Jandun, who disappears at this time and to whom the abusive epithets of the
Florentine chronicler apply equally well.

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 21

but it has the primary merit of expressing quite precisely the
author's thought. There are very few passages the meaning
of which does not become clear when one reads them in the
light of all the rest. The badness of the Latin comes from its
nearness to the thinking process of the writer, in other words
from his modernness, and this only brings him so much the
nearer to our own ways of putting things. Such Latin as this
any one of us might write if he were well grounded in vocabu-
lary and proportionally indifferent to syntax.

Especially notable is his departure from the favorite mediae-
val syllogistic method. Occasionally he drops into it with a
casual reference to a major or a minor premise, but in gen-
eral his reliance is not upon the formal soundness of Ip^cal \ -^ ^
propositions, but upon the inherentjbruth or the self-evident \
common sense of his ideas. His process is fore-shadowed
by the division of his work into three "dictiones/' i. e. state-
ments. He does not offer subjects for argument; he makes
statements, and then proceeds to demonstrate them by ex-
planation and elaboration. He is anxious, not so much to
prove his point by contentious discussion as to present it in a
variety of lights and then leave it to the fair judgment of the
reader's good sense and right intention. It is this method
which has brought upon Marsiglio the reproach of vain repeti-
tion, and it is true that he does repeat a good deal. A reader
concerned only with the main argument would find this an-
noying, but examined carefully it does not appear quite vain.
Each repetition occurs in connection with some new way of
presenting the given thought, and the long result is not to ^
confuse but to clarify.

It would be of interest to know whether the Defensor Pads
was written on the express commission of the emperor Ludwig
the Bavarian or was the outcome of Marsiglio's independent
thought and was then offered to the emperor as the patron
most likely to find it of service and to reward it most hand-
somely. The fact that it is formally addressed to Ludwig
gives no indication on this point; for if accepted by him it
would certainly under any circumstances have been fitted with
an appropriate dedication. On the other hand, in the dedica-

22 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

tion as it stands there is no hint of a commission, and I inchne
to think that Marsigho's profession is an honest one that he
is moved 'Ho commit these opinions to writing" as a loyal
''son of the city of Antenor (Padua), by love of truth-telling,
by zealous devotion to his fatherland and his fellow-citizens,
by pity for the oppressed and a desire to save them and to
recall oppressors from the error of their ways, and to rouse
those who permit such things when they ought and can prevent
them, especially the emperor as the servant of God. . .after
long, close, and diligent examination, in the hope thereby to
be of assistance to you (the emperor) in your efforts to suppress
these evils and in other ways to serve the public good."

He proposes, with God's help, to set forth only the one
peculiar cause of the present conflict: "For to reiterate the
nature and number of those causes which Ai'istotle enumerates
would be superfluous; but from this cause, which Aristotle
could not know and which no one since his time has tried to
set forth, we hope so to lift the veil that it may henceforth
readily be banished from all civil communities, and when this
is accomphshed that rulers and people of good will may live
in peace, the supreme desire of all men in this world and the
loftiest goal of human action." This one pecuhar cause of
strife is the existence of the corrupt Church under the papal
administration.

Marsigho has been further accused of inconsistency and
contradiction. I cannot find this charge substantiated by
facts. If his definitions are understood and accepted, his
statements hold together with a quite remarkable consistency.
From beginning to end there is no variation on essential points.
The third book, which he calls "Conclusions," sums up the
results of the first and second with continuous references to
specific passages binding the whole together. The most strik-
ing case of apparent contradiction, the defence of democracy
and at the same time the advocacy of the imperial rights, dis-
appears when one follows carefully Marsiglio's analysis of the
imperial office as the representation of the ultimate right of
the people.

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 23

With these preliminary remarks we are prepared to follow
the course of Marsiglio's thought as nearly as possible in the
order in which it is presented in the work itself. The first I ^'^^
book is devoted to a discussion of the principle of the State, [
the second to an examination of the orignTand development
of the Church, its appropriation by the Roman papal system,
and its relation to the civil powers. The third is the brief
summary of conclusions already mentioned. Marsiglio's first
care is so to define his terms that there shall be no doubt in
what sense he is using them. Like his predecessors he bor-
rows the Aristotelian formulas as far as they suit his purpose.
The State is a living organism, designed to secure to men those
guarantees of order and the free development of capacity which
shall lead to their highest good. Rulers there must be, but
they are subordinate to the control of law. The definitions of
law give us an excellent illustration of MarsigUo's analytical
process. Law in its first meaning is a natural inclination
toward a certam action^r feeling, as for instance, when Paul
says (Rom. 7, 23), "I see a different law in my members
warring against the law of my mind." Secondhj, law means a
form or model in the mind for something to be made, as in
Ezekiel (43, 12f.), "Behold, this is the law of the house; and
these are the measures of the altar." Thirdly, law is a rule for
such human actions as have reference to reward or punishment
in the life to come. In this sense the Mosaic law is called
"law" in some of its parts, and the Gospel law is so called in
its entirety. In this sense also all ''sects," as for instance that
of Mahomet or the Persians, have ''laws," though only the
Mosaic and the Christian contain the truth. Fourthly, and
more widely accepted, is the meaning of law as the whole
body of opinion as to what is right and expedient in civil affairs
and what is opposed to this opinion. Under this head may
be distinguished a theoretical and a practical division, and the
latter is to be taken as the definition of law in the strictest
sense, because it imphes behind the theoretical principle a

V\V^-

24 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

praeceptum coactivum, a coercive sanction, which alone can
give effect to the principle.
^ I In this definition of law as a principle of right supported by
"^ '/the force necessary to put it into execution we have the key-
/note of Marsiglio's whole argument. It is only the power
which has this coercive jurisdiction that can properly be en-
trusted with the application of law, and the whole thesis of
the Defensor Pads turns upon the distinction between the
V secular and the spiritual powers in this respect. fHis grievance |
I is the invasion of the rights of secular authority by powers }*
which are essentially spiritual and ought, therefore, to be
restricted to the exercise of spiritual functions?^ u^he remedy
is to be found in drawing as sharply as possible the lines of
division between the two types of authority which have be-
come obscured partly through the persistent aggression of the
clerical and partly through the ignorance or indifference of the
lay elements of the Christian society.

But now, whence comes this law which is to hold the balance
amid the conflicting passions of a human community? In the
answer to this question we find the most striking feature of
Marsiglio's work. Without hesitation he declares that the
^^\ source of law is to be found, not in any divine right of rulers,
not in any superior wisdom of any class of society, but in the
-whole body of citizens.

"We declare that according to the Truth ^ and to the opin-
ion of Aristotle, the Lawgiver, that is, the primary, essential
and efficient source of law, is the People, that is the whole
body of citizens or a majority of them, acting of their own free
choice openly declared in a general assembly of the citizens and
prescribing something to be done or not done in regard to civil
affairs under penalty of temporal punishment. I say a
majority, taking account of the whole number of persons in
the community over which the law is to be exercised. [It
makes no difference] whether the whole body of citizens or its
majority acts of itself immediately or whether it entrusts the
matter to one or more persons to act for it. Such person or

^ I understand the word Veritas to be used here and in many other passages
as sjTionyTnous with Gospel.

V\'

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 25

persons are not and cannot be the Lawgiver in the strict sense,
but only for a specific purpose and at a given time and on the
authority of the primary lawgiver." Marsiglio seems to be
guarding himself thus early in his inquiry against the charge
afterward made against him that in emphasizing the rights of ^
the people he was in so far minimizing the right of the emperor
whose cause he was nevertheless defending. His point is that, j
within the scope of the powers given him by the people, the
ruler cannot lawfully be interfered with by any other authority '
whatsoever.

The phrase here translated by the word '* majority" {pars ^
valentior) has been the subject of much discussion. Some
writers have insisted that Marsiglio meant by it, not a numer-
ical majority, but the more competent part of the body of
citizens. I am convinced, however, by examining a great
number of cases, that he was in truth a champion of the mod-
ern idea of majority rule as, on the whole, the best expression
of the will of the whole community. In connection with the
words pars valentior he frequently adds some further explana-
torj'^ phrase which seems to indicate a numerical use, and the
same idea is confirmed by the spirit of many^oTTiis references
to the political sense of the lower orders of the people.^

For example, speaking of the lawmaking process, he says:
"The truth of a proposition is more accurately judged and its
usefulness to the community more carefully taken into account
when the whole body of citizens apply their intelligence and
their feeling to it. For the greater number (major pluralitas) a ,
can detect a fault in a proposed law better than any part of | ^ "v
them, as every corporate whole is greater in mass and in value 1
{mole atque virtute) than any one of its separate parts." Mar-
siglio seldom mentions the universitas civium without adding,
''or its pars valentior.'' Sometimes he uses valentior multi-
tudo or pluralitas. He enlarges at great length on the impor-
tance of giving to all citizens some share in the government;
he dwells upon the capacity of the humblest to do his part;
but he nowhere describes any higher group as having special
qualifications for citizenship. If by pars valentior he had
meant "the more competent" or "the more highly placed"

WfV

26 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

or "the more responsible," in other words any kind of an
aristocracy, it is hardly conceivable that he should not have
followed his invariable practice and given a precise definition
of his meaning.

Speaking of the right to call a council (ii. 21) he says that
this belongs to the Lawgiver, i. e. to the body of the faithful,
because it or its pars valentior cannot so easily be seduced by
selfish motives as can the Roman bishop or the College of
Cardinals. Among the duties of the to-be-reformed pope is
that of sitting as judge in strictly ecclesiastical cases with the
parte valentiori sive majori of the college assigned to him by the
Lawgiver. Here the meaning ''majority" seems perfectly
clear. Referring to the election of the emperor MarsigUo says
that its vaUdity depends upon the valentiore parte of those
qualified to vote, a positive allusion to the principle of the
majority as fixed in the Electoral College. In view of all these
illustrations I feel no hesitation in regarding MarsigUo as a
theoretical advocate of majority government.

What does MarsigUo mean by ''citizens"? He answers
//this question with the Aristotelian definition: "I call a citizen
w one who has a share in the government of the civil community
I either in an executive or a judicial capacity, according to his
\ degree." This excludes boys, slaves, foreigners and women,
though in different ways; for boys are to become citizens in
the near future. It is to the whole body of citizens thus de-
fined that MarsigUo would commit the making of laws. The
objection will be made that there are few wise and thoughtful
persons, while the multitude of the simple (stulti) is infinite.
But the greater part of the citizens are neither wicked nor
lacking in judgment as regards the greater part of the questions
that concern them and for the greater part of the time. (One
is reminded of President Lincoln's inmiortal version of the
same truth.) For all, or the greater part, are of sound mind
and reason and of good will toward the state. Even though
anybody and everybody does not originate laws, yet anyone
is capable of a judgment in regard to matters originated by
others and submitted to him, as to whether they ought to be
added to or diminished or amended. The danger of legisla-

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 27

tion by a few is that they are likely to be moved by selfish
interests rather than by the welfare of the community, "as has
been abundantly shown in the decretal legislation of the clergy."

The process of lawmaking, therefore, should be as follows:
Wise men, expert in the law, should be chosen in the general
assembly of the citizens and entrusted with the framing of bills
(regulae). ''When these bills have been duly drawn up and
carefully revised by these experts, they are to be submitted
to the citizens in convention for amendment or rejection.
Then, after everyone has been heard who has anything reason-
able to say about them, again men are to be chosen or the
former experts are to be confirmed, who as representatives of
the authority of the body of citizens shall approve or reject the
proposed bills in whole or in part ; or this may be done, if they
so choose, by the body of citizens themselves or the majority
of them. After this approval, the so-called bills become
'laws' (leges) and are to be so designated, but not before.
These alone, after being duly proclaimed, can bind those who
violate them by civil penalties."

The ruler {principans) must govern according to the laws,
but he must be of such quality that he can supplement them
by what Marsiglio says he understands is called by jurists
"equity," that is "the beneficent interpretation or moderation
of the law in a specific case which is included in a rigid inter-
pretation but might have been excepted if it could have been
foreseen." To enforce the law the ruler should have a suffi-
cient armed force, but this should not be allowed him until
after his election. One feels here a reference to the repeated
action of the German electors in choosing a not too powerful
prince to be their principans. The ruler should have a large
liberty of executive action, but should never be allowed to
forget that whatever he does is done by him as the agent of
the sovereign people. Marsigho quotes with approval the
Aristotehan maxim that all parts of the state should grow, like
the parts of the human body, in due proportion, without the
overgrowth of any one part, as, for example, of the multitude
in a democracy, or, he adds, "of the priesthood under the
Christian law."

28 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

Perhaps in consequence of his medical training, MarsigUo
is especially fond of these analogies between the physical life
and the life of the state. He never forgets that the state is a
living organism with its directing force and its executive
members. In the chapter on the origin of government (i. 15)
he says:

"Like the action of nature in forming a perfect animal is
that of the human mind in estabUshing a state and the parts
thereof. . . . There is in nature a certain generative principle
by which the body of the animal is formed and a certain dis-
tinctive quality (virtutem) given to each of its parts. The
part first formed is the heart or a something comparable
(proportionalis) to it. . . . This part first formed is nobler and
more complete (perfeda) than the other parts of the animal.
For generative nature has fixed in it a force and an instru-
mentality by which the other parts are formed out of appro-
priate material, are separated and distinguished one from the
other, set in due relations, preserved in their characteristics,
and protected against natural injuries. But if, through sick-
ness or other check they fall away from the normal they are
restored by the vigor (virtus) of this part.

" In the same way we should view the process of creating a
properly constituted state. By the whole body of citizens as
the soul {anima) there is or should be created a part comparable
to the heart. In this is to be fixed a certain power or model
(forma) with an active force or authority for estabhshing the
other parts of the state. Now this part is the government
(principatus) , which in its causal aspect represents the uni-
versal law. Its active function is to administer justice, to
issue commands, and to carry out just and expedient civil
administration.

" This part in the state should be nobler and more perfect in
its qualities, i. e. in prudence and virtue, than the other parts.
. . . For the creative principle of the state, namely the com-
munity-soul, has fixed in this first part a certain universal
causal force, which is the law, and also the executive power.
Just as the natural warmth of the heart through which it
performs all its activities is directed and regulated in its action

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 29

by the structure and potency of the heart itself and could
fulfil its purpose in no other way; furthermore, just as the
heat called spiritus is regulated throughout the body by that
same potency ... so also the coercive power of government,
entrusted to any man as an instrument, is analogous to the
heat called spiritus and should be regulated by the law in
dealing justice, in issuing orders, and in carrying out measures
of civic expediency; for otherwise the ruler could not fulfil his
purpose, which is the preservation of the state."

It might have been expected that Marsiglio, with his doc-
trine of the sovereignty of the people, would have been an
advocate of a purelydemocratic form of government. Such,
however, is not thecase. Heanalyses the various kinds of
rule, distinguishing carefully between democracy which he'
describes as the corruption of politia, that is a republic, in
favor of the proletariat, the egenorum multitudo. Monarchy:
is the rule of one person for the good of all, in distinctioioTromi
a tyranny, which is the rule of one for his own advantage |
The monarchy he has in mind is ajinuted^one {temperatus
principatus) , and rests upon the consent of the people, while a
tyranny is independent of the popular will. Marsigho does
not declare himself abstractly in favor of any one type of
government. He reaUzes that not all peoples, nor the same
people at all times are fitted for the abstractly best of govern-
ments {optimmn principatuum) , and that therefore only the
practically best under all the circumstances is to be expected;
but it is this limited monarchy which is assumed in all his
later treatment of the subject.

Whether this monarchy should be an hereditary or an
elective one was obviously a matter of great importance in
Marsigho's scheme, and he gives to the discussion of this point
a proportionally ample space. He first states the case of the
opposition to election in twelve propositions and then proceeds
to refute these one by one. The whole argument is summed
up in the one principle, that inheritance gives similarity of
body, but cannot be depended upon to give that continuity of
spirit which is the greatest safeguard to the institutions of the
state. The elected ruler is more likely to correspond to the

30 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

"conformity of perfection" with his predecessors and with
the principle of perfection in the whole universe of things than
is the hereditary ruler.

This discussion leads naturally to the further inquiry whether
there ought to be one single government for the whole civilized
world (civiliter viventium). It is almost impossible not to
connect Marsiglio's treatment of this question with the De
Monarchia of Dante, which may have appeared within a
dozen years before the Defensor Pads. Marsiglio says that
the subject is open to discussion, but is not pertinent to the
present treatise. He does, however, go so far as to deny that
the unity of the world is the model for the constitution of civil
society. The Empire is a unit only in the sense that the
several units of which it is composed submit themselves volun-
tarily to its supremacy, whereas the unity of the world depends
upon some essential relation of each of its parts to a principle
of unity at the center. The analogy, therefore, on which
Dante bases his chief argument is expressly denied by Marsig-
lio. Nature, he thinks, seems to point rather toward multi-
plicity than towards unity, and he sees a possible purpose in
this in order that, through wars and diseases of men and other
animals, the population may be kept within the limits of suffi-
cient support. Here is a touch of fourteenth century Malthu-
sianism, but it is evident that Marsiglio feels himself here a
little beyond his depth, and he turns the subject back to his
own immediate field of discussion. Obviously too it would
not do for him to go too far in diminishing the authority of the
Empire he is defending.

The concluding chapter of the first book is a comprehensive
statement of the purpose of the work as a whole. The object
of government is to secure peace. Peace is the orderly work-
ing of all parts of the state according to the nature and purpose
of each. It consists in the free interchange of the activities
of the citizens, their mutual aid as against any hindrance from
outside, and in the participation of all iji the advantages of
their common life, each in his own degree. The opposite of
all this is discord. Thus much was known to Aristotle, but
now comes in the Church as the disturbing element and with

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACTS 31

this the necessity of a new adjustment of powers. It is this
cause which, by hindering the activities of its ruler, has de-
prived and still deprives ''the ItaUan kingdom" of peace and
its blessings and fills it with every sort of misery and injustice.

The immediate source of this evil of clerical supremacy
Marsiglio finds in a change of theory as to the origin and
development of the papal power. He rehearses briefly the
establishment of a priestly order through the ordination of
the Apostles, all of them equally, as the successors of Christ
in the work of human redemption. That was enough down
to the time of Constantine, but after that a claim ''seems to
have been derived from a certain grant which some say was
made by Constantine to Sylvester. But then, either because
this grant does not precisely formulate this claim or because it
has lapsed through the progress of events, or was invalid as
regards the other principaUties of the world (or even as to the
rule of the Romans in some of the provinces included in the
grant) - for these reasons more recent bishops of Rome have
based their coercive jurisdiction over the whole world upon
another title, namely, upon the plenitude of power (plenitudo
potestatis) which they claim was granted by Christ to St. Peter
and his successors in the Roman See as Vicars of Christ.

In other words the Roman claim has been transferred from I
an historical basis to a theoretical one. The course of history '
brings changes; but a theory, if it can be maintained as a
divine ordinance, does not change. In this was the obvious
advantage of the Roman position and the most difficult point
for its opponents to overcome. It is interesting to note that
Marsiglio, more than a century before the complete exposure
of the fraudulent Donation of Constantine by Lorenzo Valla
casts a certain shade of doubt upon that universally accepted
document. "Some say" that such a grant was made. Its
contents are not specific as to Roman supremacy; its terms
had become antiquated. One feels that if only the historic
sense had awakened in the fourteenth as it did in the fifteenth
century, the honor of that great exposure would surely have
fallen to this fearless investigator.

"The title 'Vicar of Christ,' means, therefore, according to

3^ MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

the Roman bishops, that, as Christ had plenitude of power and
judgment over all kings, princes, communities, associations
and individuals, so those who call themselves vicars of Christ
and of St. Peter have plenitude of coercive jurisdiction not
hmited by any human law. . . . Popes are oppressing Italy on
account of her divisions and her sufferings, but they overlook
worse things in princes whom they fear. They gradually
worm themselves (serpunt) into others' rights, especially those
of the Empire during vacancies, until now they claim temporal
coercive jurisdiction over all subjects of the Empire in Germany
as well as in Italy."

This is the cause of the existing discord which prevents the
emperor from exercising his power to keep the peace, and
hence, all wise and powerful men should unite to check these
usurpations. Marsiglio himself will use his learning to this
end and is prepared to take the consequences.

VI

With the way thus prepared, Marsiglio enters upon the
second and more important stage of his exposition. He antici-
pates three kinds of opposition : first persecution by the Roman
bishops and their "accomplices." They will oppose him
because he is attacking their ambition for temporal riches and
power. It will be idle to attempt to curb them by judicial
argument: "May a merciful God restrain their fury and pro-
tect the faithful, princes and people, whose peace is menaced
by them." Here is the note of Luther's appeal to the German
princes as the only possible defenders of the people's cause.
The second kind of opposition will come from the false teach-
ing of would-be leaders, the confusion of things temporal and
things spiritual, the threatenings of eternal punishment to
simple minded believers. Words simple in their original
meanings have been perverted by gradual usage into false
implications. So it will happen that many who read or hear
these pages, especially those untrained in philosophy or in the
Scriptures, will be checked at the outset. And then there will
be the obstacle of malicious envy. Even men who know that

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 33

what is here said is the truth will ''rend it with the tooth of
secret detraction or attack it with the noisy yelpings of pre-
sumptuous envy, simply because it is said by some one other
than themselves." But Marsiglio will not be turned from his
purpose by fear of any of these enemies.

Here again he begins with a series of very carefully guarded
definitions, first of all with a definition of the Church. Ac-
cording to Aristotle ecclesia signifies the assembly of all the
people belonging under one government. Among the Latins
the word means, first and in the most popular sense, a building
in which God is worshipped in common by the faithful, and
then the officials, presbyters or (seu) ^ bishops, deacons and
the rest who serve in such a building. In recent times {apud
modernos) the Church means chiefly (maxime) those ministers,
presbyters or (seu) bishops and deacons, who serve or preside
in the metropohtan or chief of all churches, a position gained
rather recently (dudum) by the church of the city of Rome,
whose servants and presiding officers are the Roman pope and
his cardinals. These now by a certain usage have gained the
point, that they are called ''the Church," and that the Church
does or receives whatever they do or receive or ordain in any
way whatsoever.

But in another sense, and this the most true and most ap-
propriate of all according to the earUest usage and the intention
of those who first employed it, the Church is the whole body
of believers who call upon the name of Christ, and includes all
parts of this body in whatever community they may be, even
the community of the home {etiam domestica). Such was the
primary use of the term among the apostles and in the primi-
tive Church, and therefore all faithful followers of Christ,
priests or not priests, are and of right ought to be called viri
ecclesiastici "churchmen." To put it in other language:
The Church consists of all those who belong to it, and here
one sees the working in Marsiglio's mind of that philosophical

' Almost invariably when Marsiglio speaks of bishops and presbyters together
he connects them by the word seu, hardly ever by et or atque. This seems to
be one way of expressing his opinion on the essential equality of all ordained
clergymen.

34 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

process of which his co-worker WiUiam Ockham was the most
eminent spokesman. The unit of Christian fellowship was
the individual Christian. It was not the order, the class, the
official college, which determined the status of the individual;
it was the body of individuals that gave sanction to every one
of its organs. As the philosopher would have said : The thing
was the reaUty, and the general concept was only a convenient
name by which to express the complex of things — "universalia
post rem,'' in distinction from the formula which had dominated
the thought of the Middle Ages, "universalia ante rem." It
is this emphasis upon the right of the individual Christian
man that runs like a scarlet thread throughout every stage of
Marsiglio's further demonstration.

He goes on to distinguish between the words "temporal"
and ''spiritual." Temporal is readily defined as whatever
pertains to the use and advantage of man in this world. The
difficulty is in fixing the limits of the spiritual. MarsigUo
enumerates no less than seven different senses in which the
word is frequently employed. In general it may be used of all
incorporeal things and their activities. More specifically it
applies to the divine law, its teachings and its disciphne, and
so to the sacraments of the Church and their effects, the divine
grace, all theological virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit pre-
paring us for the eternal life. Further, it may include all those
voluntary human actions or experiences (passio7ies) which
tend toward merit in the life to come, as, for example, divine
contemplation, affection toward God and our neighbor, chari-
ties, fastings, prayers, pilgrimages, contempt of the world and
escape from it. Less important is its application to the church
building and all the apparatus connected with divine service.

But now, in the most recent times, certain persons extend
this word "spiritual" most unsuitably and inappropriately to
those actions of the clergy which are to the advantage or dis-
advantage of another person with reference to the present life.
Still more improperly they include under "spiritual" the
temporal possessions of the clergy, both real and personal, and
also certain incomes from them which they call "tithes," so
that under cover of this usage they may be exempted from the

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 35

ordinary rules of the civil law. Surely this is an open abuse,
and is contrary to the intention and practice of the apostles
and saints, who called such things not " spiritualia," but
"carnalia seu temporalia." ''For not all their acts are spiritual
or ought to be so called. Many of them are civil acts subject
to contention, carnal, and temporal. For priests can borrow,
make trusts, buy, sell, strike, kill, rob, fornicate, rape, betray,
bear false witness, slander, fall into heresy, or commit other
crimes, just as they are committed by laymen. Wherefore
we may properly ask them whether any one of sound mind can
call such actions when committed by them spiritualia."

The words judex and judicium offer another fine distinction.
We use the word "judge" of an expert in some technical art,
as, for example, of a physician, a geometer, or a carpenter, and
his opinion within his field is a "judgment." Specifically, a
judge is one having special knowledge of pubUc or private law,
commonly called an advocate, though in many regions, espe-
cially in Italy, he is called judex. Again, this word is used
of the ruler, and his opinions are called judicia and have coer-
cive power. Again and again in later chapters Marsiglio refers
back to these fundamental distinctions in the use of terms in
order to make perfectly clear in what sense he is using them at
the moment and to guard himself against objections arising
from their corruption or perversion. Especially in defining
the powers of the priesthood he will insist upon the sharpest
distinction between their character as experts and their claim
to coercive jurisdiction.

The arguments for the coercive powers of the Papacy are
summed up under the one principle that, as the spiritual is
higher than the temporal, so that power which is primarily
concerned with spiritual things has rights of control over all
powers which have to do only with temporal things. Espe-
cially is this claim advanced as against the Empire, because
the Papacy pretends to the right to confer the imperial power
and to transfer it from one prince to another, as in the case of
the famous transfer from the ruler of the east to the king of
the Franks. This pretension has recently been renewed in the
strongest terms in the conflict between Ludwig the Bavarian

36 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

and his rival Frederic of Austria. Marsiglio proposes to show
"by the witness of Scripture in both its hteral and its mystical
sense, according to the interpretation of holy men and other
approved doctors, that neither the Roman bishop called ' pope '
nor any other bishop, presbyter, or deacon has a right to any
sovereignty (principatum) or judicial authority {judicium) or
coercive jurisdiction over any priest, ruler, community, asso-
ciation, or individual of whatsoever condition (understanding
by 'coercive judgment' what we have already described as
contained in the third meaning oi judex and judicium)."

This sentence may be said to contain the thesis of the whole
work. It is a sweeping proposition, and Marsiglio seems to
feel the necessity of safeguarding himself by a disclaimer.
Here, he says, is no question as to what power or authority
Christ, true God and true man, had and still has in this world,
nor how much of such authority he had power to confer upon
St. Peter, or upon the other apostles and their successors the
bishops or presbyters; for on this point no true believer has
any doubts. What he wishes to investigate is the "question.
What executive power and authority in this world Christ
willed to confer upon them and de facto did confer upon them,
and from what he excluded and prohibited them both by his
advice and his commands. Christ came into the world, not to
rule over men, not to judge them with judgments (according
to the third meaning), not to be a temporal sovereign, but
rather to subject himself to the conditions of the world as it
was; nay, he purposely willed to exclude and did exclude
himself and the apostles and disciples and consequently their
successors, bishops or presbyters, from all temporal rule or
sovereignty (that is, of a coercive character), and he did this
by his example, his teaching, his counsel and his commands.

We are not greatly concerned with the long array of texts of
Scripture and quotations from the Fathers from Augustine to
Bernhard of Clairvaux. This is notoriously a kind of argu-
ment that can be used with equal success on either side of any
question. The fact was, that the Church, in the narrower
sense, had fortified itself with a tremendous structure of legal
precedent and defiant assumption against which nothing short

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 37

of determined revolt could accomplish any permanent result.
The conclusion is the inevitable one, that since no clerical
person has the right to coercive rule, all clergymen must be
subject to the civil lawgiver, and may exercise jurisdiction
over laymen or other clergymen only in so far as this is per-
mitted to them by that lawgiver, in whose power, moreover,
it lies to deprive them of it for reasonable cause. And it must
not be forgotten that this "lawgiver" is, according to the
definition, the People, acting either directly in assembly or
through a ruler chosen by their own free action.

This leads naturally to an examination of the famous "power
of the keys." Christ said to Peter (Matt, xvi, 19), "I will give
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven : and what-
soever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
Similar sayings were addressed also to the whole body of the
apostles (Matt, xviii, 18 and John xx, 23) . What do they mean?
Marsiglio answers in such a way as to show that he accepts \\
the practice of the Church in committing to the priesthood the
function of performing the sacraments and pronouncing the
remission of sins upon due confession and repentance; but
he shows also that the real process of absolution depends, not
upon any action of the priest, but upon the grace of God freely
given to the individual repentant soul. Confession is properly
required, but if it is not practicable, then absolution takes
place without it, provided, however, that the penitent have the
honest intention of confessing at the first practicable oppor-
tunity. It is a modified protest, but the spirit of it is evident.
The real thing is the individual will; the ceremony is accessory.

Marsiglio's authorities here are Peter Lombard and Richard
of St. Victor, and he sums up his conclusion from their opinions :
"From which it is evident that as regards the merit of the
penitent, the Roman bishop has no more power than any other
priest to absolve from guilt or from penalty. God alone ab-
solves the truly penitent sinner without any action of the
priest either preceding or accompanying." As to excom-
munication, although there is need of a priest to declare the
decision, still the coercive function does not belong to any

38 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

single priest or to any collegium of them. It is the right of the
whole body of the faithful in the community where the ac-
cused person belongs, or of his ruler {superior) or of a General
Council to appoint a judge, whose duty it shall be to summon
the accused, to examine him, to pass judgment, and to acquit
him or condemn him to public disgrace and separation from
the society of believers. Nevertheless in the inquiry as to
whether a person ought to be excommunicated or not, a judge
of this sort should associate with himself a body of clergymen
as experts in the law and the customary practice. "If it were
lawful for any one priest, either alone or with his collegium of
clergymen, to excommunicate anyone he please without the
consent of the whole body of the faithful, it follows that a
priest or a collegium of them might take away all kingdoms
and principalities from the kings or princes who hold them.
For if any prince be excommunicated, all his subjects will be
excommunicated also if they continue to obey him, so that the
power of every prince will be destroyed,"

By numerous analogies Marsiglio tries to make still clearer
the distinction between the professional and the extra-pro-
fessional action of the priesthood. It is the function of the
priest to examine the accused as to whether according to
the Gospel law he ought to be cut off from the communion of
the faithful lest he infect others; just as a physician or a council
of them has to decide about a physical disease, e, g, whether a
leper ought to be separated from human society. But, as the
physician has no coercive jurisdiction which would enable him
to enforce such a decision, so the priest has no power to enforce
his expert judgment. In the same way, the turnkey (claviger)
of a prison has the duty of opening and closing the doors, but
has no power to say whether the door shall or shall not be
opened to a given prisoner at a given time. He has to proclaim
that the prisoner is freed or not freed, but it is not his procla-
mation but the decree of the judge which really releases him.
If he proclaim a man to be free or bound, contrary to the
decree of the judge, the man is not therefore free or bound. So
the priest has the function of declaring the sinner absolved or
condemned, but has no coercive right in the matter.

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 39

We now begin to see the practical applications of the dis-
tinctions thus carefully worked out. The first of these is the
right of civil jurisdiction over the civil or temporal offences of
clergymen. The fact already set forth that clergymen can
and do commit crimes brings them of itself within the scope of
the civil law; but Marsigho goes a step further. The clergy-
man, as an expert in morals, sins more gravely and less excus-
ably than the layman, and ought therefore to be the more
severely punished. ''Let no one object, that injuries by word
of mouth or to property or to the person or of any other kind
forbidden by secular law become ''spiritual acts" when com-
mitted by a priest and that therefore their punishment does
not belong to the secular ruler ... for these are, as already
shown, carnalia and temporalia. If the Roman bishop or any
other priest were to be thus exempted from the coercive juris-
diction of rulers, and were himself to be a judge of this sort,
freed from the authority of the human Lawgiver, and might
separate all spiritual servants (commonly called "clergy")
from the jurisdiction of rulers and subject them to himself
(as the Roman pontiffs are doing in these days), it follows of
necessity that the secular jurisdiction of rulers would be almost
totally destroyed. That, I think, would be a serious evil and
of great moment to all rulers and all communities."

In pursuance of their doctrine of clerical exemption, Roman
bishops have recently been trying to include as many kinds of
persons as possible under the term "clergy." For example, all
such orders as Templars, Hospitallers, lay brethren known as
Beghini or Fratres Gaudentes or the Order of Altopascio ^ and

1 et eos qui de alto passu. This puzzling description doubtless refers to the
lay mendicant Order of Altopascio, the seat of which was in Tuscany on the border
between Florence and Lucca. The Rule of this Order is printed in the collection
called Curiositd Letterarie, vol. liv, Bologna, 1864. The Italian manuscript,
supposed by the editor to be a translation from a Latin original made about
1300, gives the name as Altopasso. This plainly suggests the derivation, alius
passus. It is, therefore, quite intelligible that a branch of the Order established
in Paris by King Philip IV (1285-1314) should have been called du Haul Pas.
The use of this name seems to have caused the original Altopascio entirely to
disappear. It does not occur in the description of the Hospital of the Order in
Paris given in Du Breul, TMdtre des Antiquitez de Paris, 1612, nor in Helyot,
Histoire des Ordres Religieux et Militaires, ii, 282, 2d ed. 1792. In both cases the

40 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

so on pro libito. If all persons of this sort are to be exempted
from the jurisdiction of civil rulers, with immunity also from
public burdens, it seems a very obvious danger that the greater
part of mankind may slip into these orders. If this should
happen the coercive jurisdiction of rulers would be left without
effect, a grave evil and corruption of the republic. "For who-
ever enjoys the honors and advantages of a civil community,
as, for example, the peace and protection of the human Law-
giver, should not be exempted from its burdens and its juris-
diction without the action of the Lawgiver itself. "To avoid
this we must admit, in accordance with the Truth, that the
ruler has jurisdiction over all bishops or presbyters and clergy-
men by authority of the Lawgiver, in order that the republic
may not go to pieces through undue multiplicity of powers.
The ruler ought further to assign a certain number of clergymen
to each district subject to him, as also of every other class of
citizens, lest through their undue increase they come to resist
the coercive power of the ruler or otherwise to disturb the
peace of the realm and impede the community or the kingdom
in carrying out its necessary activities."

In the effective sense of the word "judge," there is but one
who can give final judgment as to transgressions of the divine
law, that is Christ and no other. In this world there is no
judge who can exercise coercive jurisdiction for such offences.
The priest is, so far as this world is concerned, only a "doctor,"
or expert. His business is to teach, to exhort, to convince by
argument, to terrify transgressors by fear of future condemna-
tion at the judgment seat of Christ, but not to compel by force.
Such enforced conformity is of no use whatever, since it profits
nothing to the man so far as his eternal salvation is concerned.
So that, "in accordance with the Truth and the obvious inten-

origin of the Order is said to have been at Lucca. It was only the unfailing
linguistic instinct of my colleague, Professor George Foot Moore, working down-
ward from Marsiglio's qui de alio passu to the French Havi Pas, that enabled
me to work upward again from this to Altopascio and to discover the missing
link in Altopasso. A considerable account of the Order with many documentary
proofs is given in Giovanni Lami, Deliciae Eruditorum, Florence, 1769, vol.
xviii, pp. 50-184. All three of these rare books are in the library of Harvard
College.

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 41

tion of the Apostle and of those holy men who were the most
famous doctors of the Church, no one is to be compelled in this
world to obey the Gospel law by any form of punishment or
penalty, whether he be a believer or an unbeliever. Conse-
quently, no minister of this law, bishop or presbyter, can judge
any one in this world (in the third sense of the word ' judg-
ment 0, nor compel any one to observe the divine law, especi-
ally without the authority of the human Lawgiver."

We are thus led naturally to Marsiglio's views as to the
punishment of heretics. He does not question that the heretic
deserves some kind of correction, and admits that at first
thought such correction seems to be the function of the priest
as the expert in the divine law. But here comes in his funda-
mental distinction again. It is Christ alone who can judge the
heretic for his offence against the divine law, and this judgmsnt
is reserved for the world to come. If, however, he be forbidden
to remain in the region where his heresy was proven, then, as a
transgressor of human law he may be coerced by the custodian
of that law, as authorized by the human Lawgiver. But if the
human law allows him to stay in the community of the faith-
ful, then ''I say that no one has the right to coerce the heretic
or other infidel by any penalty or punishment, real or personal,
so far as his status in this Hfe is concerned. The reason for this
is a general one : that no one, however he may sin in matters of
opinion, is to be punished or coerced in this world for the
opinion itself, but only in so far as he offends against a com-
mand of the human law."

MarsigUo next devotes several chapters to the critical ques-
tion of apostohc poverty and its modern apphcation in the form
of sacerdotal poverty. Nowhere else does he let himself go in
bitter accusation of the folly and wickedness of the clergy as
he does here. As usual he begins with definitions, analysing
with the utmost care the various forms and degrees of property
rights in a civil society. Especially interesting in view of the
later exposition by Wycliffe and his followers is Marsigho's
definition of dominium or lordship. ''Strictly, dominium
means supreme control over a thing justly acquired and so held
that no one else has a right to this thing without the express

42 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

consent of the person in control." In common usage this
definition appUes, not only to a thing itself, but to the use or
usufruct of the thing, a distinction which underlies the most
important of Wychffe's contentions on this subject. Marsiglio,
however, does not here enlarge upon this point, but includes
both kinds of dominium in his later applications. The term
applies to ownership by corporations as well as individuals,
and this gives the opportunitj'^ for references to the property of
reUgious orders. "We must not forget" says our author,
"that there are some of the voluntary poor who have aban-
doned earthly things from honorable motives and in suitable
ways. But there are others who seem to have given up these
things not with any such purpose but for vain glory or some
other wordly deceit (fallaciam). We must bear in mind also
that of earthly goods (which they call riches) there are some
which according to ordinary human needs are to be consumed
at once, as food, drink, medicine and the like; others of a
permanent kind which by their very nature serve many uses,
as land, houses, tools, clothing, horses and slaves."

As a conclusion from this distinction Marsiglio lays down
what seem to him sound principles of sacerdotal economy.
Clergymen should be content with their daily bread and the
necessary clothing if they desire to attain a condition of perfec-
tion or poverty in the highest sense {summam paupertatem) .
But on the other hand it is the bounden duty of those to whom
they minister to supply these necessities if they are able to do
so, and the clergyman has the right to demand such support,
though not by coercive process in this present Ufe. He can
have recourse only to the "divine law." There is no warrant
in Scripture for requiring tithes or any other part of the
property of the faithful. If the community is so poor that it
cannot support the clergy, then they must seek some other
honorable and suitable way of increasing their income.

"Now someone will ask, to whom belongs the dominium or
right of suit before a civil court over such temporaUties and
especially over real property, since, as we have shown, such
dominium does not belong to gospel ministers in their state of
perfection. I say, that the ownership of property set apart

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 43

for the maintenance of ministers of the Gospel belongs to the
Lawgiver or to its deputies for this special purpose appointed
either by the Lawgiver or by the donors of such property.
Persons thus appointed for the defense and recovery of ecclesi-
astical property are usually called ''patrons" of churches. . . .
It is not fitting, therefore, that Christ's perfect ones, the
successors of the apostles, should reserve to themselves fields,
towns, or fortresses. Never was there given in the acts or the
example of Christ a formula to the Church for holding lordship
over real property or of reserving it to themselves for the future,
but examples of the opposite we do indeed find in Scripture.
A formula for holding personal property for the purpose above
specified we do find, but nowhere for holding real property."
It is at this point that Marsiglio strikes hands with the
Spiritual Franciscans in their crusade for the evangelical
poverty of the clergy and especially in their fight against Pope
John XXII. In thus making common cause with a class of
persons as little Ukely as any to be accused of unorthodoxy his
case was greatly strengthened.

VII

Marsiglio is now prepared to move on to the most telling
argument in his whole attack, and to grapple with the vital
question of papal supremacy. By way of introduction he
summarizes once more what he has already laid down as to the
nature of the sacerdotal office. His main distinction here is
between the essential quality or "character" of the priest and
his other more distinctly functional quality. The former in-
cludes the power to celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist
and to absolve the faithful from their sins. This power is
granted by God through Christ immediately, though with a
certain preparatory human ceremony, as the laying on of
hands and the utterance of certain words. These human acts,
however, have no efTect in so far as the conferring of the essen-
tial sacerdotal character is concerned, although "they precede
in pursuance of a certain divine covenant or ordinance."
" Quite another thing is that human institution by which one

44 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

priest is set above others, or by which priests are assigned to
certain territories for the instruction of the peoples in the
divine law, for administering sacraments and dispensing those
temporal rights which we call "church benefices." As regards
the former, the essential priestly character, all priests are equal
as all the Apostles were equal. No one of the Apostles had
authority over any other or over the whole body of them, either
as to their essential and primary character or as to any second-
ary institutions.

In this way Marsiglio leads up to the vital question of the
Petrine supremacy. We recall that he said rather early that
the claim of the Roman bishop to supremacy over other ele-
ments of the Church had in recent times been shifted from the
historical basis of the Constantinian Donation to the dogmatic
or speculative basis of the Petrine succession. This has,
therefore, become the very crux of the whole papal position
and is in consequence selected by MarsigUo as the most critical
point in his attack. Taking up the argument as to the equality
of the priestly character he applies it at once directly to Peter.

"Peter had, therefore, no power and still less any coercive
jurisdiction directly from God over the other apostles, neither
the power of inducting them into the sacerdotal office, nor of
setting them apart, nor of sending them out on their work of
preaching, excepting that we may fairly admit a certain pre-
cedence over the others on account of age or service {officio) or
perhaps from circumstances {secundum tempus) or the choice
of the apostles, who properly revered him — although no one
can prove such a choice from Scripture. The proof that what
we are saying is true is, that we find in Scripture that St. Peter
assumed no peculiar authority for himself over the other
apostles, but, on the contrary maintained an equality with
them. For the whole body {congregatio) of the Apostles was
of higher authority than that of Peter alone or of any other
Apostle. Why, then, do certain sacrilegious flatterers take
upon themselves to say that any one bishop has from Christ
plenitude of power over clergymen, not to say over laymen,
when neither Peter nor any other Apostle ever presumed to
ascribe such power to himself either by word or deed?". . . .

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACTS 45

"Furthermore, since it is written that Peter was elected bishop
at Antioch by the multitude of the faithful, not needing the
confirmation of the other Apostles, and that the rest of the
Apostles presided over other regions without the knowledge of
Peter or any institution or confirmation by him (since they were
sufficiently consecrated by Christ), we ought in the same way
to hold that the successors of these Apostles needed no con-
firmation from the successors of Peter. Nay, more, that many
successors of other Apostles were dul}'' elected and installed as
bishops and governed their provinces as holy men without any
further institution or confirmation by the successors of Peter."
As to the supremacy of the bishop of Rome as the successor
of Peter, it is marvellous, says Marsigho, that people will over-
look the fact that the Roman bishops are the successors rather
of Paul than of Peter, and it is " supermarvellous " when wel
consider that it is not the See of Rome but the See of Antioch l ^
which ought justly to claim this succession. It was Paul who
was sent out to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, as Peter
was sent to the Jews. ''It can be proved by Scripture that
Paul was two years at Rome, preached there and converted all
Gentiles who were wilUng to be converted, and therefore it is
evident that he was in a special sense bishop of Rome and
exercised there the pastoral office, having his authority from
Christ, commanded thereto by revelation and elected by the
consent of the other Apostles." "But, as to Peter, I say that
it cannot be proved by Scripture that he was bishop of Rome
or, what is more, that he was ever at Rome. For it seems most
amazing if, according to some popular saint's legend, St. Peter
came to Rome before St. Paul, preached there the word of God
and was then taken prisoner, if then St. Paul after his arrival
in Rome acting together with St. Peter had so many conflicts
with Simon Magus and in defence of the faith fought against
emperors and their agents, and if finally, according to the same
story, both were beheaded at the same time for their confession
of Christ, there fell asleep in the Lord, and thus consecrated
the Roman Church of Christ — most amazing, I say, that St.
Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles and Paul himself
make not the shghtest mention of St. Peter."

46 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACTS

When Paul came to Rome the Jews there declared that they
knew nothing about this ''new sect" except that it was every-
where badly spoken of (Acts xxviii, 22). Now, asks Marsiglio,
can any one who is seeking the truth and not merely looking
for an argument believe that Peter had come to Rome in ad-
vance of Paul and had not said a word about Christ? Or that
Paul, if he had known that Peter had been preaching there
would not have referred to him as a witness? " Can any one
think that Paul was for two years with Peter at Rome and had
no intimate relations with him, for, if he had, that the author
of the Acts would not have mentioned it? For in other and
less important places where Paul met Peter he mentions him,
as at Corinth and at Antioch and many other places, and if he
had met him at Rome, the most important city in the world,
where, according to the above story St. Peter was in charge
as bishop, how could he have failed to mention him? So that
these things are practically (quasi) incredible, and that story
or legend cannot with any probability be accepted as to this
part of it, but must be reckoned among the apocryphal writ-
ings. But according to Scripture it ought to be held without
a doubt that Paul was bishop of Rome, and if some one else
was with him at Rome, nevertheless Paul should for the above
reasons be regarded as the sole and chief Roman bishop, while
Peter should be considered as bishop of Antioch, as is evident
in the second chapter of the letter to the Galatians. I do not
deny that Peter was bishop of Rome, but I hold it to be very
probable that in this he did not precede but rather followed
Paul."

The Petrine legend is thus, so far as the essence of it is con-
cerned, thoroughly demoUshed. MarsigUo, Uke any fair
minded Protestant controversiahst, is wilhng to admit the
great probabiUty of Peter's presence in Rome and even that he
may have had some such leadership in the Christian commun-
ity there that he may fairly be described as its ''bishop."
What he will not admit for a moment is that he was in any
special sense designated in any way as the divinely ordained
head of the Roman Christians. Still less will he admit that,
whatever leadership Peter may have had at Rome, this was of

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 47

such a nature as to give to his successors there any shadow of a
right over the successors of the other Apostles in their several
districts. In so far as the papal supremacy rests upon the
Petrine argument, the author of the Defensor Pads rejects it
absolutely. Never, in the hottest controversies of the Reforma-
tion period was this line of attack followed more completely
or more convincingly. Never, with all the resources of modern
scholarship has anything essential been added to the chain of
evidence which has shown the weakness of the Petrine claim as
the basis of papal supremacy. MarsigHo is the pioneer in the
use of a strictly historical method in examining the foundations
of the imposing structure of the mediaeval church. We have
here no metaphysical speculation and no appeal to formal logic.
The Papacy claimed to rest on a series of historical facts;
MarsigUo's contribution was to show the instabihty of these
alleged facts. Other and far more vaUd grounds for the Roman
supremacy there were indeed, but at this point MarsigHo is not
concerned with them. For the moment it is the Petrine ques-
tion and that alone which holds his attention, and to this he
clings with extraordinary consistency until he has disposed of it
in all its details.

Quite distinct, as we have already seen, from the essential
quaUty of the priest as the dispenser of divine law to the faith-
ful is the function of assigning specific clergymen to special
territories and of determining their relation to the means of
support. Marsiglio now addresses himself to the task of de-
fining more accurately this latter process, in other words of
describing the actual and the ideal conditions of the system of
benefices that formed the basis of so enormous a part of the
curial activities of his day. From what source did this control
of the clerical forces of Christendom originate? True to
his guiding principle Marsiglio declares that in the beginning,
especially before the conversion of the nations, the active cause
{causa Jactiva) ■■. i this secondary determination of place and
condition of living v^as either the whole - cdy of the Apostles
or some one of them, as circumstances might dictate. Then,
after the time of the Apostles and the early Fathers, by a
certain order of succession and especially in communities that

48 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

were already completely developed (jam perfectis) the immedi-
ate active source has been and ought to be either the whole
body of the faithful in the given community acting through its
own voluntary election, or else the individual or individuals to
whom the community has committed authority to carry out
such arrangements. Such trustee of the community's interests
may be compelled by it to take action or may at its discretion,
be removed from office. In well organized communities it is
the human Lawgiver alone who has the duty of selecting,
prescribing, and presenting the persons who are to be raised to
ecclesiastical orders. No priest or bishop alone and no college
of priests may assist any one to obtain ecclesiastical rank with-
out permission of the human Lawgiver or of the prince who
rules by its authority.

As to the temporalia (usually called benefices), Marsiglio
reminds us again that these are established either by the
community for the support of ministers of the Gospel "and
other persons deserving compassion (miserahiles) ," or else by
some individual or corporation. In the former case the Law-
giver alone has the right to appoint and remove officials who
shall present to the clerical office. In the latter, this right
belongs to the donor or donors, always, however, subject to
correction by the Lawgiver in any doubtful case. The chmax
of this chapter is reached in Marsiglio's doctrine of ecclesiasti-
cal taxation. ''And again, from what has been said it must be
clear that the human Lawgiver or the prince ruling by its
authority, in case there is a surplus above the needs of the
ministers of the Gospel, arising from ecclesiastical property,
especially from real estate, may lawfully collect taxes and
revenues therefrom according to both human and divine law,
for the defence of the country or the redemption of captives as a
service to religion, or for carrying on public works or other
reasonable purposes according to the judgment of the Christian
Lawgiver. For the grantor of such temporalities to an indi-
vidual or a corporation for pious uses may not grant them with
any greater immunity than they had while they were in his
possession. They were not exempt from public burdens then,
and cannot be so after their transfer by a donor or founder into
the possession of another."

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 49

Having thus disposed of the Petrine claim of the Roman
bishopric to supremacy over others and so over the Church as a
whole, Marsiglio proceeds to examine those other claims which
may be summed up in the one word "historical." He cites
his authorities, including here especially the collection of
canon laws known by the name of Isidore. In his estimate
of the authenticity of these authorities he stands on the level of
his own time, neither higher nor lower. He accepts, not only
the Donation of Constantine with certain reservations, but also
the Forged Decretals, now universally admitted to be a fabri-
cation of the ninth century, but then received as undoubted
evidence of a certain right of dictation by Rome to tne other
churches in the period before Constantine. Marsiglio sums
up his results as follows : — During the whole of that period no
bishop exercised any coercive jurisdiction over other bishops.
What happened was, that many bishops in other provinces,
when they were in doubt regarding Holy Scripture or the
correct practice of the Church, since they did not venture to
come together openly, consulted the bishop and the church at
Rome. They did this because of the greater number and the
greater experience (peritia) of the Roman Christians, since
the pursuit of all kinds of learning flourished greatly at that
time in Rome, and in consequence its bishops and priests were
better schooled than those in other places. Furthermore, they
were held in greater reverence on account of Peter, the senior
of the Apostles, who was said to have been bishop there, and
of Paul, of whom the same is even more probable. The same
kind of respect was paid to the City of Rome as the capital and
most famous city of the world.

These are all practical reasons, historically justified. Marsig-
ho's implication is plain: if it had been possible for the provin-
cial bishops to come together they would have fallen back
upon the fundamental right of the community to determine
its rules of practice for itself. In the absence of this possibility,
they turned to the most obvious source, the center toward
which the provincial looked for direction in all matters of legal
or poUtical import. They appUed to Rome for suitable direc-
tors of their spiritual interests, because such persons abounded
at Rome. Their appUcations were met by the Roman Chris-

50 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

tians in a spirit of fraternal affection {charitative atque fraterne)
and bishops were sent out ("though men could scarcely be
found who were wilUng to accept this office"). So also the
Roman orders were communicated to the provincial churches,
and dissensions among them were heard and disposed of in
Christian love. "But now, from this priority of custom and
the voluntary acquiescence of the other churches the bishops
of Rome went on successively to assume a more ample author-
ity and to issue decretals or ordinances for the whole Church
in matters pertaining to church practice and to the conduct
of the clergy, down to the time of Constantine. That emperor
seems to have exempted the clergy from the coercive jurisdic-
tion of the civil authorities. He seems also to have given to
the church of Rome and to its bishop rights and powers over
all other bishops and churches, which they now, however, as
we have already shown, claim to be derived from another
source" (namely, the Petrine succession).

MarsigUo has thus clearly indicated that in so far as the
Roman bishopric represents an ancient and honorable tradi-
tion of sound doctrine and correct practice, he is ready to admit
its claim to the reverence, and, within Hmits, even to the
obedience of Christendom. What he will not admit is any
such basis of divine appointment as entitles Rome to unques-
tioning obedience and, least of all, to any coercive jurisdiction
over other bishoprics or over civil powers. In developing this
opposition he asks first : — to what writings must the Christian
man give absolute acceptance as a condition of salvation?
His answer is, that in the first place Holx-Smpture is to be
assumed as true and accepted with steadfast faith {firma
creduUtas). The same kind of faith is to be given also to such
interpretations of Scripture as are declared by a General Coun-
cil to be vahd, because the decision of such a council is inspired
by the Holy Spirit and therefore cannot err. On the other
hand, no such implicit faith is to be given to any writing in
which there is a possibiUty of human error. This is the weak
point {hoc patiuntur) of writings emanating from an individual
or a restricted corporation (collegii partialis). Such writings
as experience shows, may be lacking in truth, which is not the

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 51

case with the canonical Scriptures. MarsigUo quotes Augus-
tine in confirmation and closes his inquiry thus : "St. Augustine,
therefore, understood by canonical writings only those which
are contained in the Bible and not the decretals or decrees of
the Roman pontiff or of the college of liis priests whom they
call "cardinals," nor any other human ordinances whatsoever
concerning human actions or contentions and devised by
human ingenuity. For "canon" means rule or standard, a
standard because it is something certain, something that is
pecuhar to Holy Scripture alone as compared with other
writings."

VIII

Where, then, are we to look for such authoritative interpre-
tation of Christian faith and practice as shall secure the Church
against those errors and schisms which MarsigUo recognizes
as fatal to the essential unity of Christendom? His answer
may fairly be described as the first proclamation in the century
long campaign which was to result in the great series of General
Councils, whereby the whole structure of the Church was to
be essentially modified. If one seeks a point where Pre-Re-
formation history may be said to begin, one finds it as distinctly
marked here as anywhere. For it is from this point on that
the demand for a council which should be radically different
from any of those partial assembUes which in the mediaeval
period had claimed universal authority grows more and more
insistent. As Marsigho's doctrine of the People as the source
of law penetrated jnore^deeply and more wi3e]^iifOEe3on-
sciousnessj^f thrnking men, the feeling that this same principle
must be extended to the Church as well grew more intense,
until it culminated in an irresistible demonstration.

The twentieth chapter of the second book of the Defensor
Pads contains Marsigho's program for a working General
Council. Its monumental importance justifies a more ample
treatment than we have given to any other portion of his
argument. The problem of the Council, he says, is the settle-
ment of doubtful and sometimes contradictory opinions of
learned men in regard to the divine law. "I propose to show

52 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

that the principal authority for such a settlement, be it mediate
or immediate, is that of a General Council of Christian men
or of the majority of them or of those to whom such authority
is deputed by the whole body of believers. The method is
this: Let all the more important provinces and communities
of the world, according to the determination of their human
lawgivers, whether their government be unified or manifold,
and in proportion to the number and quaUty of the inhabitants,
select pious men, first priests and then laymen, suitable persons
of blameless life and skilled in the divine law. These are to
act as judges (in the first meaning of that word), i. e., as experts
representing the whole company'' of believers. They are to
assemble in virtue of the authority committed to them by
their several communities (universitates) , in a place selected
by the majority of them or of their lawgivers, and there are to
settle matters pertaining to the divine law which may appear
doubtful, determining what things are useful, what are expe-
dient and what are necessary. They have further to decide
with regard to other matters concerning the church ritual or
divine worship as shall best conduce to the peace and order
of the faithful."

Attendance at the Council is to be obUgatory, enforced if
necessary by the civil authority. Priests are bound to this
duty by the nature of their office; but laymen also, if selected
to serve, are equally under obligation to be present and to
assist in the discussion of matters affecting the common welfare.
Such a council is vested with final authority in the matters
presented to it, and this excludes the final authority of "any
one single person or college." A proof of the need of lay
co-operation at councils is found in the historical fact, that in
those of the early Church Christian emperors and empresses
with their court officials were present and aided in the settle-
ment of doubtful points. If this was proper then, how much
more so now, when the throng of priests and bishops ignorant
of the divine law is so much greater. When priests differ
among themselves as to what must be beUeved in order to
attain eternal life, the decision must rest with the majority of
the faithful.

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 53

"If the Pope of Rome or any other single bishop had author-
ity of this sort, or if the letters and decrees of the Roman
pontiff were of equal authority with the decisions of a General
Council, then all the governments of the world, all kingdoms
and provinces and all persons of whatsoever dignity or pre-
eminence or condition, would be subject to the coercive
jurisdiction of the Roman bishop. For this is what Boniface
the Eighth declared in his letter or decree beginning "Unam
sanctam catholicam ecclesiam" and ending: "We proclaim,
declare and establish, that henceforth it is a necessary article of
faith that every human creature is subject to the Roman
pontiff." . . . Now, however, it is clear that this is false from
the beginning, the most injurious of all imaginable falsehoods
to the welfare of all civilized peoples." Its falsity and its folly
are shown by the decree "Meruit" of Clement V, which
expressly exempts the king and people of France from its
operation.

In early times matters of doubt could be settled by assembUes
of the clergy alone. "Now, however, on account of the cor-
ruption of the church administration, the greater part of the
priests and bishops are but little versed in sacred Scripture, so
that the temporalities of benefices, are gained by greedy and
litigious office seekers through servility or importunity or
bribery or physical violence. And, before God and the com-
pany of the faithful, I have known numbers of priests, abbots,
and other church dignitaries -of such low quahty that they could
not even speak grammatically. And what is worse, I have
known and seen a man less than twenty years of age and almost
completely ignorant of the divine law entrusted with the office
of bishop in a great and important city when he not only lacked
priestly ordination, but had not passed through the diaconate
or subdiaconate."

The General Council thus defined is to be called together by
the human Lawgiver and is to act under the special protection
and supervision of the ruler who represents the Lawgiver. It
is clear, says Marsiglio, that this cannot be the function of the
Roman bishop or of the College of Cardinals, because, if he
alone or with them were to be accused of crimes requiring the

54 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

judgment of a council it is highly probable that he would delay
calling it, or would put it off entirely to the grave injury of the
body of the faithful. This temptation does not exist for the
faithful Lawgiver or the community of beUevers, since they
or the majority of them are not easily to be corrupted. Further-
more the enforcement of the conciliar decrees against all
offenders, clerical as well as lay, belongs to the human Lawgiver
or to his representative, the temporal ruler. This right extends
even to making statutes regulating the government of the Holy
See and the election of the Roman pontiff. It includes a mul-
titude of details such as fasts, restrictions of marriage within
certain degrees of relationship, charters to new religious orders,
imposition of penalties in person or property. 'Tor it were a
scandal to the peace and order of the community of the faithful
if an ignorant or malicious priest or bishop or any college of
them should excommunicate a prince or lay an interdict upon
a province."

The Council is to be the supreme and final judge in regard to
assignments to benefices, the issuing of hcenses to teach, notarial
commissions and similar grants. If the principle of the " Unam
Sanctam'' were to be enforced, it would mean the gravest
danger or even complete ruin to all civil governments. "In
his edicts against the noble Ludwig, Duke of Bavaria, accepted
as King of the Romans, a certain person called Roman Pope,
professes to be deahng only with the Roman kingdom or empire,
but in reaUty he includes all governments, ascribing to himself
plenitude of power and thus covering all other kings as well as
the prince of the Romans. This bishop, I say, is seeking juris-
diction over all the princes of the earth in order to control the
granting of benefices and tithes, and is thus stirring up sedition
especially throughout the whole Roman Empire." Hence
follows the duty of the human Lawgiver (i. e. the People) and
of the prince representing it to watch this whole business of the
church temporaUties and to see to it that if there is any surplus
beyond the needs of the clergy it be devoted to the necessities
of the pubhc defence or other service to the community.

The most impressive feature of this conciUar scheme is its
representative character. It proceeds from the base of the

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 55

social structure upward to its higher levels, not from above
downward. The unit of representation is the local commiinitv
acting on the initiative of its own civil authorities. The dele-
gates^ clerical as well as lay, are to act in virtue of the authority
deriyedfrom the community, not_in virtue of any essential
quality of their own. The clerical members, to be sure, have
an especial quahfication a^s experts in faith and morals, but
only as such. Their ogimoas are to command respect only
upon their individual merits. Even the selection_of the place
of meeting, always a consideration of great importafice, is to be
in the hands of the delegates themselves or of their constituent
communities, an obvious precaution against ''packing" by
any centraUzed authority. The choice of delegates is to rest
partly upon a numerical basis, partly upon that estabUshed

distinction of social classes which no rational schemeoTreTorm
in the fourteenth century could wholly ignore.

It is in this matter of the General Council that the intel-
lectual kinship of MarsigUo and William Ockham is most
clearly manifest. In Ockham's most famous treatise, the
Dialogue ^ between an inquiring Scholar and a somewhat ap-
pallingly learned but affectedly reluctant Magister written about
1340 we have an elaborate discussion of the nature and powers
of the Council analogous at almost every point with that of
Marsiglio. As the latter bases his argument upon the funda-
mental right of the whole body of citizens to act immediately
and directly in matters of interest to all, so Ockham, the
professional champion of the new philosophy of NominaUsm,
starts with the conception of a state or of a church as an aggre-
gate of individuals, bound together indeed by common inter-
ests, but not thereby divested of their essential individual
quahty.

An illustration of this principle and at the same time of
Ockham's logical method is found in his discussion of the ques-
tion whether a General Council can fall into error in a matter
of faith. (Dial., Part I, Book iii, ch. 25). "Individuals,
hable to error when they were in divers places, continue to be

1 Dialogus Magistri Guillermi de Ockam doctoris famosissimi, in Goldast,
Monarchiae S. Romani Imperii etc. Frankfurt, 1668. II, pp. 392-957.

56 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

so liable when they come together in one place. Their coming
together does not prevent some of them from being perverted
in their faith {inohliquabiles) . For, as the place does not
sanctify the man, so the place can confirm no man in his faith.
... If a hundred or two hundred bishops were (formerly)
liable to fall into heresy through their own wills, they could
do the same after coming together."

Ockham plays with this argument, twisting it back and
forth with every possible device of logic through page after
page until he finally forces it to its logical outcome. The
General Council may err; the pope and the cardinals may err;
is it possible that the whole body of Christians should fall into
error? The Scholar asks the question, and the Magister re-
plies: ''Well, Jews, Saracens, and Pagans firmly believe that
the Christian faith is erroneous." ''But I wasn't asking for
their opinion," replies the Scholar, "I meant to ask whether
any Christians believe this, and among Christians I include
also heretics."

Mag. "I never heard of a Christian who believed this."
Sch. "And yet, perhaps you could think up some reasons for

such an opinion."
Mag. "A false question can be answered only by sophistical

reasoning."
Sch. "True; but oftentimes false propositions can be sup-
ported by reasons that are plausible and hard to controvert.
So, will you kindly try to invent some of these?"
The Magister then goes on to say, that one reason why aU
Christians might fall into error is, that belief, whether of the
individual or of the group, is not self-evident but is a matter
of will, and the human will is always liable to error. Another
reason is as follows: "No one can deny that all Christians ex-
cepting two bishops might become heretics. Now, these two
bishops might fall into heresy, because God can have no greater
care for them than he had for our first parents, and he per-
mitted them to lapse from the faith. Finally, it is clear that
any aggregate (ilia multitudo) of Christians might err, provided
only that Christ's promise that his faith should abide forever
be preserved inviolate. Now, if all living Christian men and

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 57

women should become heretics, still this promise would be
preserved through the aggregate of baptized children."

Sophistical reasoning indeed! And yet, however fantastic
this game of logic-chopping may appear to us, it certainly ex-
presses the very essence of that new mental attitude of which
WilHam Ockham was the chief exponent. In the last resort
it was no single official or college or assembly or class or sex
or age that could give a final verdict in a matter of faith. All
these might fail; but even so, somewhere within the body of
Christians must be found that mystical witness to the truth
which should ensure its permanence.

In spite of Ockham's metaphysical conclusion that no specific
portion of the faithful is exempt from error, he recognizes the
General Council as practically the efficient representative of
the Church as a whole. There was a time, says the M agister,
when the Church was so small that its members could all come | ^
together. Now that this is impossible the next best thing is [I
to secure a^riie_re£(resentation. "Therefore, if the several \\
parts of the Church universal elect certain delegates to come
together to take action in regard to the Church of God, these
delegates in their assembly, — even though there be no lawful
pope — may be called a General Council." The method of
convening such a Council may be as follows: "Let each parish
or other community which can conveniently hold a meeting
send one or more persons to a synod of the diocese or to the
court (parlamentum) of the king or prince or other civil govern-
ment, and these shall choose delegates to the General Council.
Those who are thus chosen by the diocesan or "parfiamentary"
councils, coming together, may be called a General Council."

Ockham admits that, as a rule (regulariter) a true council
cannot be called without the authority of a pope; but, if the
pope be heretical, or the cardinals fail to choose a new one, then
the primitive right of the Church to act re-asserts itself.
"Papal authority is never to be interpreted to the prejudice of
the Christian faith, for that is superior to any pope, even to a
catholic one." As to membership in the Council, Ockham like
Marsigho insists upon the participation of laymen, but goes
beyond him in at least apparently advocating the admission of

68 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

women. He touches the point briefly and with a shade more
than his usual caution (c. 85) : ''The participation of women is
defended on the ground of the identity of the faith in men and
women, which includes all and in which is neither male nor
female. Therefore, where the wisdom, the gentleness (bonitas),
and the strength of women are necessary to a consideration of
the faith, women are not to be excluded from a General
Council."

IX

In what sense then, if in any, would Marsigho accept the
headship of any one church or any one bishop over others?
He answers this question in detail in the twenty-second chapter
of his second book. Unity is essential to the well-being of the
Church. This unity can best be secured through a unified
administration. A single headship is, therefore, advisable;
but of what sort and under what hmitations? Marsigho gives
four possible interpretations of the principle of headship.
First, in such sense that all utterances of the accepted head
must be received by all believers as necessary to salvation.
Second, that all clergymen or colleges of them are subject to
the coercive jurisdiction of the supreme pontiff. Third, that
he or his special college has the sole right of assigning benefices
and distributing their emoluments. All three of these con-
ceptions of supreme pontifical right Marsigho has already
discussed and rejected in toto.

There remains a fourth, the details of which are laid down at

considerable length. According to this view, the basis of any

y I single headship of the Church is to be found in the approval of a

/ General Council or of the human T.awfflver. The functions

/ of the Head, who is always to act in accord with a college of

\ priests assigned to him for this purpose b}'^ the Lawgiver or by a

General Council, are as follows: First, to notify the Lawgiver

whenever a case is brought before him of such importance that

it seems to require the action of a council, in order that the

summons to the council may be duly issued by the Lawgiver as

set forth above. Second, to "hold the chief place at the

council." (Whether this implies a presidency in the modern

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACTS 59

sense, may perhaps be questioned.) He is to propose topics for
discussion, to direct the drawing up and certifying of the record
of proceedings, to communicate the result to any churches
which may so request, and to make himself master of the
decisions so that he can give instructions in regard to them.
He is to punish their violation with spiritual penalties, but
always under direction of the council and without recourse to
any coercive action against persons or property. He, together
with a majority of the college assigned to him by the council,
may sit in judgment upon bishops or churches in strictly
spiritual matters, but always with a right of appeal to the
human Lawgiver or to the General Council.

In this sense, and in this alone, MarsigHo thinks, the head-
ship of a single bishop and church over others is expedient for
the Church as a whole. But what church and which bishop
shall it be? Speaking according to the strictest truth, it ought
to be that bishop who excels others in purity of life and in sacred
learning, and it ought to be that church which most abounds in
men of the highest character and most brilliant accomplish-
ment in sacred things. But, other things being equal or not
greatly different, it is the church of Rome which comes nearest
this ideal standard. Again Marsigho reviews the actual or
historical claims of Rome to leadership among the churches and
finds them vaUd. As before he yields not an inch to the idea of
apostohc succession. It is not the Petrine claim, but the rever-
ence for the memory of Peter and Paul, the greatness of Rome
the City, her purity of doctrine and her Christian charity
toward other and weaker communities, that make the soUd
foundations of her acknowledged headship. To these was
added the legalisation of Constantine's gift to make the struc-
ture complete. In that gift lay also impUcit the right of the
civil power to control the action of the ecclesiastical headship
it had thus sanctioned. As the basis of civil power is found in
the sovereign people represented by its rulers, so the final con-
trol over the action of the ecclesiastical head is vested in the
General Council, whose protector and representative is the
civil executive. It is clear, therefore, that the human Law-
giver has the final authority to discipline the head of the

60 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

Church and ultimately to depose him if he abuse his power.

With somewhat wearisome iteration MarsigUo recapitulates
his version of the expansion of the Roman claims from a simple
headship of honor to the plenitudo potestatis of the '' Unam
Sanctam": ''This doctrine has been expressed by Boniface
the Eighth among other Roman bishops in language as insolent
as it is harmful and contrary to the meaning of Scripture, and
based upon metaphysical demonstrations. He has gone so far
as to decree that the acceptance and confession of this power is
necessary to salvation. And this opinion has been followed by
his successors, Clement V, and the immediate successor of this
Clement, a person called John, although they seem to apply
it only to the empire of the Romans. But if they rest, as they
say they do, upon the gift of this plenitude of power by Christ,
then it is evident that it applies to all the kingdoms of the earth
just as much as the power of Christ himself does."

What then is this plentitudo potestatis on which the modern
Papacy bases its control of all ecclesiastical life in the widest
extension of that term? In answering this question Marsiglio
indulges once again his passion for accurate definition. He pro-
poses eight possible meanings rising from a simple jurisdiction
in spiritual matters to that absolute authority which belongs to
the words of Christ alone. All these meanings he rejects as
sufficiently covered by what he has already said as to the real
nature of papal sovereignty. Only in the sense of a priority
or leadership (principalitas) over other priests will he admit the
use of the phrase at all. What really interests him here as
elsewhere is what ought specially to interest us, namely the
historical process by which the claim to plenitude of power has
actually established itself.

He is ready to accept from the beginning what he calls a cura
animarum generalis, a general oversight of the spiritual life of
Christendom. Thereupon followed — perhaps for gain — a
claim to the power of absolution, then the practice of issuing
decrees as to ritual observances. Then the imposition of fasts
and other restrictions upon the laity as a means to avert calami-
ties, and with this the proclamation of punishments for viola-
tion of such restrictions — and all this under the guise of pious

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 61

ceremonial. " But then the appetite for wider domination grew
with its own increase. Devoted believers began to be terrified
by language of this sort on account of their low condition and
their ignorance of the divine law. They imagined that they
were bound by whatever their priests might tell them, and so,
through fear of damnation, bishops of Rome together with their
coterie (coetu) of clergymen ventured to issue certain despotic
edicts touching upon civil affairs. In these they declared
themselves and the clerical order, including some mere laymen,
exempt from public burdens. They advanced to the clerical
office even married laymen, who were easily allured by the
prospect of enjoying immunity from their obligations to the
State."

Hereupon followed the practice of visiting with excommuni-
cation all who attacked in any way the persons of clergymen,
and of calling upon the civil authorities to enforce these spiritual
penalties by the secular arm. And the worst part of this prac-
tice was that this process of excommunication was extended to
cover all cases of failure to pay moneys due at a certain date,
thus shutting out from the holy sacraments "those whom Christ
and the blessed Apostles had brought into the Church with pain
and labor and the shedding of their precious blood."

"And, not content with this, reaching out after the utmost
hmit of secular power, they have broken out (proruperunt) into
legislation quite apart from that of the civil community,
declaring the whole clergy exempt from civil jurisdiction and
thus bringing about pohtical divisions and an impossible multi-
pUcation of supreme rule. The realm of Italy is the root and
origin of this pestilent condition. There the whole scandal had
its germ and its development and as long as this continues there
will be no end of civil disorders. For this power, which he
gradually and with sly deception crept into, the Roman bishop,
of late through custom, or rather through abuse, has seized
upon and, fearing that he will be deprived of it by the Prince
[i. e. the emperor] as he well deserves to be, on account of the
excesses he has committed, he prevents the election and inaugu-
ration of the Prince of the Romans with every kind of mahcious
interference. A certain one of them has gone so far in his

62 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

insolence as to proclaim formally that the Prince of the Romans
is bound to him by a feudal obligation and subject to his
coercive jurisdiction . . . Such despotic ordinances the bishops
of Rome and their cardinals dared not call 'laws/ but gave
them the name 'decretals/ although they intended them to
have binding coercive force in this world just as human law-
makers do. They were afraid to use the word 'laws' at first,
dreading the resistance and correction of the lawmaking power
and the charge of treason against rulers and legislators. From
the beginning they called these 'canonical rights' {jura
canonica) in order to impress the faithful with their validity and
to secure their acceptance, their reverence and their obedience."
Such is the nature of that plenitude of power upon which the
extraordinary hold of the Roman See upon the church life of
the western world was based. It remains to notice some of
the consequences as Marsiglio saw them in the political and
social conditions of his day. Here, as always, he reverts to his
fundamental principle, the right of the whole people to share
in the administration of all affairs which concern their welfare.
The effect of the plenitudo potestatis is, he says, utterly to
destroy this principle in the whole field of appointment to cleri-
cal offices. The only safe method of securing suitable officials
of any sort is by election; but now election has been practically
aboHshed within the Church. It has been restricted by placing
it solely in the hands of clergymen. It has been corrupted by
leaving episcopal elections to the so-called "canons," a narrow
group of young men ignorant of the divine law, to the exclusion
of the other clergy of the diocese. It has been crushed out by
the system of papal reservations extending even to the lowest
offices of the Church. "Through these reservations elections
of suitable persons made according to law are quashed, and in
their place are thrust ignorant, inexperienced and untrained
men, often of corrupt morals or notorious criminals, men who
do not even speak the language of those over whom they are
placed .... If you count them up you v/ill not find one in ten of
the provincial archbishops, bishops, patriarchs and the clergy
of lower degree who is a doctor of theology or adequately
trained in that science." The only kind of persons who can

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 63

secure appointments are the causidici, men skilled in legal
quibbling, because they are ''useful" in gaining and holding on
to the temporalities, whereas the doctors of theology are
"useless," simple souls who would allow "the Church" to fall
into ruin.

As to the papal elections, these, says MarsigHo, are seldom
made from among doctors of theology but rather from the
"college of advocates" in shameless disregard of Holy Scrip-
ture. The College of Cardinals admits licentious youths
unacquainted with sacred learning. This corruption at the
center infects the whole body of the Church everywhere. It
leads to the appointment of the same kind of persons to the
provincial churches. It involves the clergy in political compli-
cations, and this brings about the appropriation of church
revenues to the maintenance of armies and the continual pro-
motion of quarrels among Christian men.

When Marsiglio speaks of the power exercised over clergy-
men or laymen by any one single cleric he generally adds "or
any collegium or coetus of them. ' ' Such references are obviously
to the College of Cardinals. He includes these in his criticisms
of the papal maladministration, and evidently thought that
some radical measures should be taken to reform them. As to
precisely what such reforms should be we get only one construc-
tive suggestion. The root of the evils connected with the
cardinalate was the vicious system of appointment. No other
electoral system in the whole history of elective governments
contained precisely the same element at once of strength and
weakness as this. Nowhere else do we find the electoral body
appointed by the executive whose successor it was their chief
duty to select. We speak loosely of pohtical "rings," but
never was there so complete a ring in the literal sense of the
word as here. The electoral college of the Empire was a group
of territorial lords fixed by the imperial constitution and thus
independent of all pohtical influence from the reigning prince.
The electors of the Doge in Venice were evolved from a com-
plicated series of more or less freely elected councils always
jealous of the ruHng executive and his family and ready to
supplant them whenever the opportunity should offer. It was

64 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

only in the papal system that the ring of electors and potential
popes was absolutely closed. The only restraint upon appoint-
ment of electors was the individual sense of propriety of the
existing pope and the pressure of party politics within and
without the limits of the Curia itself.

With Marsiglio may be said to begin the long series of
propositions for the reform of this electoral system which con-
/tinue all through the conciUar period and find their final
j expression in the Council of Trent. The essence of all these
propositions is the widening of the electorate, the effort to make
it more truly representative of the Church as a whole. Especi-
ally was ever increasing emphasis laid upon the necessity of
recognizing the growing principle of nationality as the basis of
such representation. In view of the radical suggestions made,
for example, at the Council of Constance, going as far even as
the abolition of the College of Cardinals, Marsigho's proposals
sound almost conservative. He aims to break the vicious circle
of appointment and election as it was working in his day. He
admits the importance of an advisory council to act with the
pope in all official ways, but he would make this board inde-
pendent of the pope's personal influence. He would have it
appointed by the General Council as the organ of the Church
universal. Whether it should be a permanent board or chosen
for specific objects is not quite clear. In one passage referring
to the duty of the pope to notify the Legislator of the need of
a council Marsiglio says that he shall do this together with his
college of priests whom the Lawgiver or the General Council
shall have seen fit to associate with him ad hoc, as if this were a
special assignment of councillors for a specific case. Numer-
ous other references, however, suggest rather a permanent
board to be selected either by the emperor or by the General
Council as the executive organs of that universitas fidelium
which is the last resort in all matters of church administration.
Although this suggestion was never adopted, and the ancient
method of appointment of cardinals by the pope has continued
to the present day, still the spirit of it has been more and more
recognized in actual practice. The personnel of the cardinalate
has in fact been greatly improved and made to correspond

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 65

more accurately to the world-wide membership of the Roman
communion. If one is willing to overlook the obvious fact of a
dominant Italian majority in the present college, one may fairly
describe it as a reasonably representative body of catholic
Christendom.

The source of all this evil is that the Head undertakes to
control the operation of all the members:

''Who would not regard the body of an animal whose limbs
were joined directly to its head as a monstrosity useless for its
own proper functions? If the hand were fixed directly upon
the head it would lack suitable space and would be deprived of
strength, of motion, and of effectual action. But this is not so
when the fingers are joined to the hand, the hand to the arm,
the arm to the shoulder, the shoulder to the neck, and the neck
to the head, all by suitable joints, so that the head can give to
each member its own proper activity. Thus the whole body
receives its appropriate form and is able to perform its normal
functions. So is it with the body of the Church and of civil
society as well. The universal pastor or the universal prince
cannot directly inspect and control the individual actions of
every one throughout all the provinces, but if this is to be done
decently and adequately he must have the assistance of special
representatives and agents. In this way the body of the
Church will be well ordered and will grow as it should. But,
if we once admit the plenitudo potestatis of the Roman pontiff,
this whole beautiful order is destroyed; for he absolves the
lower prelates and orders from the power, the oversight and
the correction of their superiors."

This is Marsiglio's contribution to the continual conflict
between the papal and the episcopal powers. It was no new
issue. His criticism of papal aggression was the common
protest of all right thinking men of his day against the abnormal
development of the centralized papal administration as com-
pared with the constantly growing restrictions upon the local
authorities of the Church. It was on this point more than any
other that the common interests of civil governments and these
local church powers became evident. The ahgnment of parties
generally threw the episcopal order on the side of the govern-

%

66 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

ment and against papal aggression. This had been wonder-
fully demonstrated in the great fight between the government
of France under Philip IV and the Papacy under Boniface
VIII. Whatever may be thought as to the political methods
of that far from scrupulous king, it is clear that on the whole he
carried the French clergy with him in his struggle for French
independence of papal dictation. It could almost be said that
the Papacy was, for the time, converted into a French institu-
tion. All this Marsigho had seen at close quarters from his
academic residence in Paris. It was unquestionably this ex-
perience, combined with his own personal traditions of Italian
democracy, that gave such vivid color to his presentation of the
,^ituation for the benefit of the German Ludwig. The papal
\plenitudo potestatis was the common enemy of every local right.
Marsiglio did not overstate the case in saying, that if this were
once conceded there was no limit to the aggression that must
ensue toward every form of government in both Church and
State.

His passionate indictment of the Roman Curia as a sink of
bargain-driving scoundrels is not a whit more venomous than
many utterances of Dante and Petrarch on the same theme.

"What do you find there but a swarm of simoniacs from every
quarter? What but the clamor of pettifoggers, the insults of
calumny, the abuse of honorable men? There justice to the
innocent falls to the ground or is so long delayed — unless they
can buy it for a price — that finally, worn out with endless
struggle, they are compelled to give up even just and deserving
claims. For there man-made laws are loudly proclaimed; the
laws of God are silent or are rarely heard. There are hatched
conspiracies and plots for invading the territories of Christian
peoples and snatching them from their lawful guardians. But
for the winning of souls there is neithei care nor counsel."

Marsigho's attacks upon the morals of the Curia are of quite
secondary importance; for the answer to such criticism is
always ready. Evils are to be expected in all institutions
administered by human beings. The remedy is to bring the
administration into better hands. This is always the watch-
word of "reform within the party"; improve the adminis-

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 67

tration and the evils will take care of themselves. What
Marsiglio's criticism meant was, that the real evil was not
found in the irregularities he enumerates, but in the system
itself. Only by a thoroughgoing reform of the system at the' I

root of which was the doctrine of plenitudo potestatis, could /

Christian societies be safeguarded against unlimited abuse of
power. Marsiglio insists over and over again that the cause
of the emperor in his controversy with Pope John XXII is the
cause of all civil governments ; but he is, of course, especially '/-^
concerned with showing the far-reaching consequences of the
papal claims in the sphere of imperial rights.

Here again he brings the issue down to the essential test, to
the question of the basis of the emperor's claim upon the
allegiance of his subjects. The Empire was the most note-
worthy illustration of his fundamental theory of the origin of
all civil jurisdiction. It was an electivev-institution, perpetu-
ated by the direct action of a limited electorate, but in its theory
that electorate represented the people as a whole. In the
formal statements of the electoral process, beginning with the
Sachsenspiegel in 1230 (?) and closing with the Golden Bull of
1356, after the enumeration of all the individual electors there
follows an express declaration that all the leading men (die
vorsten alle) are to express their approval of the choice made by
the college of seven. These leading men come as near to being
the "People" of Marsiglio's theory as mediaeval conditions
could permit. Furthermore, if we assume the year 1324 as the
date of the Defensor Pads it was only two years since the
emperor Ludwig, after eight years of fighting, had maintained
the verdict of the electoral college against the "claims" of the
Habsburg candidate supported by the unwearied activity of
John XXII. We can, therefore, quite understand the vehe-
mence with which Marsiglio makes the application of his argu-
ment against the plenitudo potestatis to the question of the
imperial electoral right.

"For if the authority of the king elect were dependent solely
upon the will of the Roman bishop the function of the electors
would be absolutely an empty one, since the man whom they
might choose would neither be nor be called "king" until he

68 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

should be confirmed by the papal will or the authority of the
so-called Apostolic See, nor could he exercise any royal author-
ity. He could not even draw from the revenues of the king-
N t\ dom enough for his daily subsistence without the approval of
^ that bishop, a thing intolerable and unheard of. What then

y would be the force of an election by the princes beyond that of
'^ a nomination, the final determination of which would depend

upon the will of one other single individual? Why! Seven
barbers or seven blind men could convey as much of a sanction
to the King of the Romans as this ! I say this in derision, not
^» of the electors, but of him who would deprive them of their

[ due authority. For he does not understand the force and the

theory of an election, nor why it is that its validity rests upon
the majority {valentiore parte) of those to whom the right of
election belongs. Nor does he realize that the effect of the
election ought not and cannot be dependent upon the will of
any one person, if it is conducted according to rule, but upon
the Lawgiver alone over whom the (elected) ruler is to be
placed, or upon those alone to whom the Lawgiver shall have
entrusted this commission. The Roman bishop, therefore,
plainly desires to destroy the office of the electors, no matter
how much he may try to bUnd them and defraud them."

The supreme test of this claim to control over the Empire is
seen at times of vacancy in the imperial office.

"Since the afore-mentioned bishop claims the right to take
the plp.ce of the emperor during a vacancy, it follows of neces-
sity that he claims also the right to compel all princes and
feudatories of the Empire to take oaths of allegiance to him.
Furthermore he demands the privilege of collecting all tributes
and other forms of taxation regularly due to the emperor and,
besides these, other exceptional taxes imposed according to the
will of that bishop in virtue of his self-constituted plenitudo
potestatis. . . . The very worst and most dangerous thing of all
is, that thus during an imperial vacancy, which, at the will of
Roman bishops may become perpetual, all princes, associa-
tions, communities and individuals under the Empire, in case
of civil suits among themselves are compelled to bring their
suits, real as well as personal, by appeal or by delation to the

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 69

court of the Roman bishop and subject themselves to his civil
jurisdiction."

The absurd claim that this control over the imperial power is
necessary in order to prevent the election of an heretical em-
peror is disproved by the obvious fact that the electoral college
contains three important archbishops who "have received from
Christ a sacerdotal and episcopal sanction equal to that of the
Roman pontiff." The chance of a bad selection is less among
seven electors than if the choice were in the hands of the Roman
bishop alone. The intention of these people, says Marsiglio,
is none other than to cut the very root of all civil allegiance.
"For, in my opinion, the root and bond of this allegiance con-
sists in the mutual and sworn faith of princes and peoples.
This faith is, as Cicero says, the foundation of all justice. He
who tries to break this bond between rulers and subjects is
aiming at nothing less than to overturn the power of all govern-
ments and subject them to his arbitrary will."

What then is the remedy? In the answer to this question
we have Marsiglio's constructive teaching. All his theoretical
arguments are here brought to a focus in a series of practical
suggestions: "For these reasons it is advisable that a General
Council should be summoned by all princes and peoples after
the manner I have recommended. This council should abso-
lutely forbid the use of this term plenitudo potestatis by the
Roman bishop or any other person whomsoever, that the people
may not be led astray through long continued hearing of false
things. The Roman bishop should be deprived of all power of
conferring ecclesiastical office and of distributing the temporaU-
ties or benefices; for that bishop now abuses these powers to
the injury of the bodies and the damnation of the souls of the
faithful. The duty of calling a council is an obhgation resting
upon all rulers, especially upon kings according to the law of
God. To this end they were instituted: to do justice and give
judgment, and faihng in this they are without excuse because
they well know what scandals will follow upon their neglect."

Here Marsiglio draws a moving picture of the ills that have
already befallen his beloved Italy in consequence of the false
conditions he has described and closes with this eloquent

70 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

appeal: "Who, then, would be so brutish a son of this father
and mother land, once so beautiful, now so torn and defiled,
as to be silent and withold his spirit from crying to the Lord
when he sees and knows these things and is able to act against
those who rend and betray her? Verily, as the Apostle says,
"he hath denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."

The last thi-ee chapters of the second 'Dictio' are devoted to
a refutation of the specific arguments in defence of the doctrine
of 'plenitudo potestatis.' They do not contain any noteworthy
addition to the arguments already put forward by MarsigUo
on the other side of the controversy. Most significant is the
renewed insistence upon a sound method in the use of authori-
ties. Supreme above all others is the authority of Scripture,
and this is to be interpreted according to the principle of com-
mon sense. Where no mystical meaning is involved the Uteral
sense of language is to be accepted. Where a mystical inter-
pretation is required, "I will accept the more probable opinion
of holy men. If, however, they advance opinions of their own,
I will accept those which are in harmony with the canon of
Scripture. Those which are discordant with Scripture I will
reverently reject, but never without the support of Scripture
upon which I shall always rely."

Here is the proclamation of those principles of bibhcal
authority and interpretation which underhe the activities of all
the great leaders of the Reformation from Wy cliff e to Calvin.
In this doctrine of Scripture is to be found, contrary as it seems
to all the implications of present day thought, the very essence
of modern religious liberty. It does not imply, as is so often
charged upon it, the "slavery to a book" which must lead men
into a bondage worse even than that of an infalhble church.
For after all, every Scripture must be interpreted, and it is in
this process of interpretation that modern hberty has worked
itself out in the field of religion as everywhere else. The
struggle was to be a long and bitter one, but the key-note had
been sounded, and it was never again to lapse into silence.

MarsigUo of Padua is the prophet of that new world of
thought and action, to which, in default of a better word, we
give the name of "modern." It is the world in which the right

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 71

of a man to think as he must and to associate himself with
others who think, on the whole, as he does is the dominating
principle of social organization. ^Ai<<.*« --iC' ^■'

X

The third and final Dictio of the Defensor Pads consists of a
brief summary of the argument of the whole work in short
paragraphs and with continuous reference to specific passages
in the previous books. It furnishes the natural basis for a
review of what we may now fairly call Marsiglio's program for
Church Reform. It bears much the same relation to the
activities of the conciliar period as that of Luther's Ninety-five
Theses to the work of the Protestant Reformation. It begins
where the main body of the book ended, with the doctrine of the
supreme authority of Scripture intepreted by the cormnon
action of the whole community of the faithful. In cases of
doubt as to what articles of faith are necessary to salvation, the
sole power of decision rests with the General Council or a
majority of its members (valentior multitudo). No partial
collegium, and no individual of whatsoever condition has this
power of decision. Dispensation from things prescribed or
prohibited or permitted by the law of the New Covenant
belongs solely to the General Council or to the human Lawgiver.
This Lawgiver is defined as the whole body of citizens or the
majority of them. Decretals or decrees of Roman or any other
bishops whomsoever issued individually or collectively without
permission from the human Lawgiver cannot bind anyone by
temporal penalties. Only the Lawgiver or its agent can dis-
pense from human laws.

No elective official who derives his authority from election
alone requires any further confirmation or approval. No
bishop or priest has, in virtue of his priestly character, coercive
jurisdiction over any clergyman or layman. All bishops are of
equal authority through Christ, nor can it be proved by the
law of God that, either in matters spiritual or in things tempo-
ral, one bishop is higher or lower than another. In accordance
with divine authority and with the consent of the human

72 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACTS

Lawgiver, other bishops acting separately or together, may as
properly excommunicate the Roman bishop as he may excom-
municate them. It is the right of the civil ruler in accordance
with the laws of the Christian community to fix the number of
churches and of the clergy who are to officiate therein.

The right to summon a council, general or special, belongs
solely to the Lawgiver or to one who governs a Christian com-
munity in virtue of its authority; and a council summoned in
any other way cannot bind any one to observe its decrees.
Those who are bound to the perfection of evangelical poverty
may have no dominium over any property whatsoever, real
or personal. Bishops and other ministers of the Gospel have a
right to receive from individuals or from the community what
is necessary for food and shelter, but they have no right to
tithes or any other form of revenue beyond these necessities.
The bishop of Rome, as well as every other spiritual minister,
ought to be appointed to his office solely by the Christian Law-
giver or the prince ruling by its authority or by a General
Council of the faithful on removable tenure, and should be
suspended or deposed from his ojffice by the same in case of
malfeasance.

Many other conclusions, says Marsiglio, might be drawn from
what he has set forth, but he is content to leave the matter
here, beheving that these will supply a sufficient line of
approach (ingressum) for the removal of this plague and the
cause of it as well. He thus justifies our use of the word
"program" for the summary of his opinions here presented.
It is not merely a theoretical, or, as we say now-a-days, an
"academic" presentation of an argument. It is a call to
action. Although wTitten primarily to meet the immediate
problems of the emperor Ludwig's stormy administration, the
Defensor Pads has a universal appHcation to all civil govern-
ments included under the general term "The Christian Com-
monwealth." Marsigho's view does not extend beyond this.
His whole scheme rests upon the basic idea of the sovereignty
of the People, but the people is the universitas fidelium, the
community of believers. This people is the ultimate Lawgiver.
It is represented by the ruler, and this ruler is the princeps or

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 73

the principans fidelis, the Christian prince. The personnel of j

the civil and the ecclesiastical communities is the same. There \

is no such thing as a church within the community; the church
is the community in its religious aspect.

This dual community, however, must have its organs of
expression, and these are to be most carefully distinguished
one from the other. Here was MarsigHo's most delicate prob-
lem. He solved it by his careful analysis of the difference
between "character" in the technical sense famiUar to every
student of church institutions and ''function" in the obvious
meaning of administrative action. The priestly "character,"
of divine ordination and conferred through certain sacred rites,
gave the power to grant absolution and to perform the eucha-
ristic sacrifice and nothing else. All beyond this, especially all
that had reference to the temporal activities of the clergy, was
functional, was instituted by human agencies and was, there-
fore, to be regulated by human laws. The distinction is as sharp
as that between the organic and the functional in the living
physical body. Just as any conflict between the two in a livingy^
organism brings disaster to the whole, so in the community of
social beings any confusion of the two ideas is sure to resiilt in „^ ^^
an impaired condition of the whole social organism. / ityrs-f "^

That, we recall, was Marsiglio's starting-point. TM curse
of society in his day was, as he conceived, the corruption of the ^ --<
Church arising from precisely this kind of confusion. The [C-C j
functional activities of the priestly order had steadily en-
croached upon the strictly sacerdotal, until there was danger ^^

that they would entirely absorb them. What was only func-
tional had come to call itself sacred and to claim the privileges
of sacrosanctity. The lay elements of the faithful community
had not understood the meaning of this tendency. They had
let things drift, but now, in the face of the unparalleled audaci-
ties of Boniface VIII and John XXII, they were aroused to the
fighting point. The rulers of the earth, one after the other, were
coming into conflict with the one power in which these perver-
sions of the true Christian order seemed to be concentrated, the
power of the Roman bishop and the collegium which he domi-
nated.

'^

74 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

Marsiglio's mission, as he understood it, was to point out by
the method of historical illustration and sound technical defi-
nition, the real nature of this conflict. His historical material
was by no means of the best, but his method in using it was
sound, and his conclusions from it have borne the test of time.
Essentially they have not been changed by the discovery of
better materials and the wider experience of modern historical
science. Marsigho is properly scandaUzed by the atmosphere
of moral indifference to which, in common with all good
observers of his time, he calls attention. But the gravamen of
his attack does not lie in the all too easy field of moral criticism.
Atrocities as such play little part in his indictment. The one
thing that really interests him is the apphcation to the existing
conditions in Church and State of the fundamental principle
from which he started, the principle of popular sovereignty.

As that principle guided him in his critical stud}?" and in his
assault upon the prevaiUng evil of his time, so it furnished the
leading idea in his constructive suggestions. The remedy was
to be found in an honest and thorough reorganization of the
church administration from the bottom upward. The begin-
ning must be made by the civil authorities because they were
the only element of the Christian society fitted to take the
initiative. But they must proceed, to use the language of
present day reform, by going over the heads of the existing
church powers and appeahng directly to the People. The
instrument of this appeal must be the General Council, and
this must be, no longer an assembly of clergymen called at the
good pleasure of the centralized papacy, but a truly represen-
tative body, built up on lines of territorial and class representa-
tion, including laymen and directed through the whole process
of its assembling and its dehberations by the highest ci^'il
authority. Its decrees must be certified and vaUdated by its
own sanctions, and, so far as they were concerned with affairs
of this world, must be enforced by the civil power.

In this great popular assembly was vested the true unity of
Christendom. For practical purposes, however, a central
organ of administration was desirable. To this end the ancient
and honorable See of Rome was especially indicated. Marsig-

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 75

lio is ready to go all lengths in his admiration for the splendid
traditions of pure doctrine and noble ser\dce that made the real
claim of Rome to the respect of Christians. Her leadership,
founded upon actual historical grounds, might be compatible
with his doctrine of popular right. What he could not admit
was that this leadership rested upon any ground whatsoever
which could make it independent of that final control. Rome
must be brought down from its theoretical primacy to its origi-
nal level as the servant, not the master of the Christian com-
munity. According to this conception the bishop of Rome
was to be the executive agent of the supreme Council. His
very election was to be dependent upon its action; for the
electoral body was to be appointed by it and no longer selected
by his own free choice.

Now, it is obvious that however admirable such a constitu-
tion of the Church might be, however well adapted to meet the
crying needs of the social order, it was not the papal constitu-
tion. Its Head, however dignified and useful, was not a pope.
The specifically Roman character of the whole institution was
gone. The Petrine tradition which gave and gives still the
quality of a divine commission to the authority of the Roman
bishop, was shattered. In place of all this was to be a rather
vague universalism lacking in all the heroic, the dramatic, and
the emotional elements that worked so powerfully in the Roman
appeal.

It remains to notice very briefly the fate of the Defensor Pads
and its influence upon the development of pohtical theory and
practice. Almost immediately after its presentation to the
emperor it seems to have become rather widely known to both
friends and enemies. Papal condemnations followed in rapid
succession, while on the other hand the imperial lawyers were
employing arguments apparently borrowed from the Defensor.
Ludwig's whole activity during the fatal years 1327-1328 was
Uttle more than the carrying out into practice of MarsigUo's
doctrines of a universal elective monarchy resting upon the
will of the people. The fantastic performance of an imperial
coronation at Rome at the hands of officials representing the
populus romanus, which in turn represented the universitas

76 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACTS

civium of the Christian commonwealth, was the dramatic but
momentary realization of the Paduan's dream. Its almost
immediate collapse was the proof, if proof were needed, how
far ahead of his time was this prophet of a new era freed from
the cramping Umitations of the age just drawing to a close.

In the course of Ludwig's tortuous policy of alternate defi-
ance and submission he makes every sort of formal promises to
repudiate his evil counsellors, but without ever taking any
practical steps to this effect. If Marsiglio survived the Roman
fiasco of 1328, there is no reason to believe that he suffered any
actual inconvenience from his repeated condemnations by the
Papacy or from the feeble protestations of his imperial patron.

It is, however, quite intelligible that other and later writers
on the same or related topics should have been cautious about
using the name of a thrice condemned heretic to support their
own opinions, and this may well explain the absence of specific
references to Marsigho in writers who otherwise give every
indication of knowing his work and of being influenced by it.
A notable early indication of this is found in the chief work of
Lupoid of Bebenburg, bishop of Bamberg, written probably
in 1340.^ In a strictly legal, formal argument Lupoid, a
canonist of repute, aims to establish the right of the Roman
king and emperor as independent of papal sanction. The
translatio im'perii from the Greeks to the German Franks was,
to be sure, made by Pope Leo III, but not in virtue of any
inherent papal right. It was effected only casualiter on a great
critical occasion when no other tribunal was entitled to act
(c. xii). The electoral right has now become embodied in the
college of the German electors. The person elected by them,
or by a majority of them, becomes king and administrator of
imperial rights in Italy and other provinces subject to the
empire. He needs no nomination or confirmation from the
pope or from the Roman church. The oath to the pope taken
at coronation is not a feudal oath but a pledge of loyal protec-
tion. In these doctrines we have the very spirit of Marsiglio's
teaching on the same subject. The main purpose of the two

' Tractatus dejuribus regni et imperii, ed. Herold, Basel 1562. See also Meyer,
H., Lupoid von Bebenburg, Studien zu seinen Schriften, 1909.

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 77

treatises is the same : the defense of the imperial power against
the claims of the Roman See. That the later does not quote the
earlier by name cannot obscure the essential similarity of the
two. The omission is sufficiently explained by the natural
reluctance of the clerical writer to identify himself in any way
with so pestilent a controversiahst as Marsiglio. Lupold's
treatise was the formulation in legal terms of ideas which
already two years before, in 1338, had found their practical
expression in the enactments of the German Electoral Union
at Reuse and in the imperial decree '^ Licet jurist The lan-
guage of these famous documents marks the highest point of
the unstable Ludwig's resistance to papal aggression.

If we think of Ludwig as animated throughout by personal
hostility to the power which had steadily opposed his most
cherished schemes of political and dynastic ambition, we can
certainly have no such conception of the man who came to the
imperial throne over the ruins of the Bavarian- Wittelsbach
pohcy. Charles IV, the Luxemburg-Bohemian rival and suc-
cessor of Ludv/ig, was distinctly the candidate of clerical inter-
ests. "King of the Parsons" and ''The Pope's Errand-boy"
were among the nicknames designed to throw contempt upon
this apparent deserter from the true imperial-German cause.
And yet, in that monumental document, the "Golden Bull" of
1356, this same Charles IV set his hand to the most positive
declaration yet made of the absolute right of the German
electoral college to create the King of the Romans and to invest
him with all imperial powers without reference of any kind to
any outside power whatsoever. The Golden Bull, henceforth
to be the corner stone of the German constitution, is the practi-
cal embodiment of Marsiglio's theories of a poUtical society.

We have seen that Marsiglio was acutely conscious of the
fact, that in championing the cause of imperial independence
he was fighting the battle of national integrity everywhere.
If, he says, this plenitudo potestatis is to be carried out to the
consequences already foreshadowed by the aggressive policy
of Boniface VIII and John XXII, then every human sover-
eignty is in danger. How sound this estimate was is clearly
shown in the affairs of England. The work of John WycUffe,

78 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS

beginning almost at the moment of the publication of the
Golden Bull, was from the first identified with the interests of
English nationality as opposed to foreign clerical domination.
Wycliffe's fundamental proposition, developed in his most
important and most elaborate treatises ^ involved the whole
problem of ^^ Dominium" to which we have already referred.
Among the heresies of Marsiglio his views on this subject took a
prominent place. These views, hardly more than outlined in
the Defensor Pads, were expanded by WycUffe at portentous
length. As a political theorist Marsigho was primarily inter-
ested in establishing the right of civil government to a hfe of
its own independent of any outside control. Wychffe, as a
philosopher and theologian, was chiefly concerned with fixing
the conditions of the ecclesiastical order. He came to the
question of the relation between church and state from the side
of the church. He saw, more clearly than any one before him,
that the crucial problem was the nature of the Church's right to
deal with the goods of this world as represented by the income
from the vast properties, which under one or another form had
slipped into its administrative control.

In other words he was led to that fundamental distinction
between the spiritualia and the temporalia which occupied so
important a place in Marsiglio's definition of terms. The
arguments of the Defensor may in this respect be regarded as
prolegomena to Wycliffe's Dominium. So comprehensive is
this word in Wycliffe's thought, that it covers pretty much
the whole range of theological speculation. The mere posses-
sion of earthly goods is but an item in the larger concept of a
rule founded in the order of a divinely controlled universe.
Marsiglio had drawn in sharply cut phrase the basic definition
of the spiritual and the temporal, but he had offered no test by
which in a specific case the right of control over temporal things
was to be determined.

That test it remained for WycUffe to supply. He found it in
his doctrine of "Righteousness," the keynote of his whole

' Johannis WycUffe de dominio divino libri tres, ed. R. L. Poole, 1890.
Johannis WycUffe Iractatus de civili dominio Uber primus, ed. R. L. Poole, 1885;
11. ii-iv, ed. J. Loserth, 1900-1904.

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 79

theological system. God, he says, as the supreme righteous-
ness, is lord of all things. All other lordship is derived from
this ultimate source. Only the righteous man can be conceived
of as having a right to any lordship at all. If any man fail in
righteousness he, in so far, forfeits his right of lordship. What
had appeared to be such must then be treated as only a hmited
right of use, not of absolute ownership. Righteousness, accord-
ing to Wy cliff e, is the state of grace into which a man is brought
by a divine process independent of his own activity. Domi-
nium, therefore, is Hmited to the elect. Any person outside
that body is by this fact deprived of any claim to lordship.

So far we are deahng with speculative, theological definitions,
but when we come to their practical apphcation we leave
theology and enter the realm of hard, work-a-day poHtics.
The critical problem for WycUffe as for Marsiglio is found in
the question: Supposing a pope is not among the elect, what
then? Obviously he can have no dominium. But, who is to
determine the fact of his unrighteousness? In answering this
question Wycliffe, like all otheis before and since who have
grappled with it, is obhged to fall back upon the evidence of
personal conduct. If a pope so conduct the business of his
great office as to offend the common sense of Christendom, then
Clu"istendom as a whole has the right to treat him as lacking in
the divine gift of righteousness and may proceed to discipline
him for his offence. Wycliffe's argument here, freed from its
almost impenetrable tangle of scholastic involution, follows
very nearly the lines of Marsiglio's thought. He does not, so
far as I know, refer to him by name, but the resemblance is
unmistakable, and the conclusion is irresistible that WycUffe
had before him the text of the Defensor Pads.

Thus fairly launched on its career as a reformatory pamphlet
Marsiglio's work penetrates every attempt at church reform
made during the five generations between Wycliffe and Luther.
It came to be one of the stock charges made against every leader
of reform that he was repeating the heresies of WycUffe and
through him those of Marsiglio. Even though the reformer
himself made no allusion to his fourteenth century predecessor,
and may, indeed, have been more or less unconscious of the

80 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACTS

debt he owed him, the sure instinct of the still dominant but
now thoroughly frightened Church pointed unerringly to the
essential continuity of ideas from Marsiglio onward.

As soon as lists of prohibited writings began to be pubhshed
the Defensor Pads figured prominently among those of the
worst class. Its place in this honorable company was firmly
established by the Council of Trent in the Index librorum pro-
hibitorum of 1558. During the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies several editions of the Defensor appeared in France and
Germany, the last at Frankfurt in 1692. The motive back of
the earliest editions was mainly hostility to the papal power
rather than interest in theories of the state. In the later edi-
tions the political motive predominates. This is shown by the
incorporation of the Defensor in the great collection of Goldast
which bears the title: The Monarchy of the Holy Roman
Empire or Treatises on the Imperial, Royal and Pontifical
Jurisdiction, Frankfurt, 1614-1668.

Every modern writer on political theory has given to Marsig-
ho some consideration, but seldom a space proportioned to the
importance of his work. It is, therefore, a matter of congratu-
lation that the administration of the Monumenta Germaniae
Historica has decided to publish what is Hkely to be for a long
time to come the definitive text of the Defensor Pads and has
entrusted the work to the scholar who appears at present to be
best prepared by prehminary studies to undertake it. It is
to be hoped that the obscurity which has so long rested on this
extraordinary book will at last be lifted and that it will take
its rightful place among those forces that have worked most
powerfully in the making of the modern world. For the
Defensor Pads, made under the stress of a specific conflict
remote in time and apparently of sHght importance at the
present day, yet deals with principles of human organization
of permanent and decisive value. In a time Uke this, when the
right of the common man to a voice in the making of the laws
under which he is to live is being claimed more widely and more
insistently than ever before, it must seem most opportune
that the work in which this doctrine is first clearly put before
the peoples of modern Europe is to be given a form suited to its

MARSIGLIO OF PADUA, DEFENSOR PACIS 81

importance. Certainly American democracy, if it is to work
out the mission with which it seems to be entrusted, cannot
afford to refuse the support or to neglect the warnings it may
derive from a study of MarsigUo's ardent plea for a Peace of
the world based upon a just balance of social classes.

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